Brick Walls
by sinisterkid92
Summary: AU. 9 years ago Kate Beckett left New York and her father. Longing to find happiness again she returns to New York, and winds up in bed with author Rick Castle. The two of them get far more than they bargained for. Starting a family with a stranger is a challenge, it's even harder for Kate who is still trying to pick up the pieces of herself after her mother's death.
1. Chapter 1

**_Brick Walls_**

 **Summary** : She returns to New York after many years in hopes of finding herself again. Having strayed far off the path she had intended to take, and having chickened out of applying to the police academy, all she has to her name is an alcoholic father and a hole in her heart. Rick is supposed to be the band aid on a bullet wound, helping for only one night, but fate makes other plans and he might stick around a lifetime.

 **A/N:** This story may have a somewhat cliché plot but it will touch on heavy subjects. I have no personal experience with alcoholism, but I intend to do my best to depict it as respectfully and accurately as I possibly can. It's going to be angsty, but also hurt-comfort. If you don't like angst them 99% of my stories are not for you! Hehe

* * *

 _If one heart can mend another only then can we begin  
So won't you hold on a little longer  
Don't let them get away  
Lonely I  
I'm so alone now_  
LYKKE LI – NO REST FOR THE WICKED

 **Chapter 1 - Meeting**

Her father looks back at Kate with unfocused eyes, eyebrows furrowing in an attempt to understand what he was seeing in front of him. This was why she didn't come here. Wanting to escape the heaviness of his gaze she walked past the couch he was lying on and into the kitchen. It didn't look much different from when she had left. There were beer cans lying opened on the counter, and a near empty bottle of cheap whiskey standing precariously near the edge. If it hadn't been years since she last had been here she wouldn't have felt quite as horrible. She knew she had abandoned him, abandoned the both of them.

Instead of lingering in those types of thoughts, because then she would pick up the bottle of whiskey and empty the last of it, she took the last trash bag he had out of the cupboard and threw all that she could reach into it; cans, bottles, paper, molding food. The traces of her childhood home seemed to have been obliterated in the past years, and the kitchen bore no semblance to how it would look like in the evenings when she would stand side by side with her mother and shop up vegetables.

As Kate tore around the apartment, shoving what she could get her hands on into the bag, her father slowly sat up on the couch and watched her with a sinking realization of what was happening. When she was picking up bottles from the floor around him he reached out and grasped her hand – it would have been a sweet gesture had he not been trembling from a hangover and nearly missed her.

"Katie…" His voice was thin, yet it weighed as if it were a thousand tons upon her shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Dad," she said, but then paused. The man looking back at her with eyes so big and round that they could belong on a baby, but the sadness in them seemed to envelop them both – that man had once been her father, but she did not recognize him now. "I'm here to…" She didn't know why she was there, why she was back. A few weeks ago Kate had been sitting at a diner hundreds of miles from here and felt as if she was a puzzle piece that had ended up in the wrong box, and that wherever she was supposed to be it wasn't there. New York had been the only place she had been able to think of, the last place she knew she had fit in. Still she did not know why she had come to this apartment, why she was looking at her father for the first time in years.

"You can stay in your room… I haven't touched it," he said. His trembling hand let go of her arm and reached for her face, but she pulled away.

"I'm not going to stay here dad," she said, and watched his face crumble in dejection. "But thanks."

It was as if Kate hadn't left, as if she had been cast back years. When he didn't respond she coaxed him off of the couch and into the bathroom. While he sat on the toilet she ran a bath for him, pulled off his clothes, and helped him into it. Neither of them spoke to each other. He was too embarrassed, and she wondered if she had ever truly escaped from this. This had always been waiting for her, wherever she was, until the two of them decided to deal with it. The two of them had always had options, promising futures, until her mother's death.

Kate left him there in the tub. The bathroom was claustrophobic and she couldn't deal to look at the man with thinning arms, a bloated stomach, and an untended to beard. She hated seeing him like that, seeing herself reflected in him.

As he had promised her room hadn't been touched, as far as she could tell. Her books were still on the shelves, notebooks in her bedside drawer, half burnt down candles on the windowsill, and clothes still in the drawers. She pulled a backpack out of the closet, one she would use for weekend trips when she was still in high school, and packed some of the clothes in the drawers into it. A lot of it was out of fashion, but there were a few sweaters and tops that she could wear. She scanned the book case – it had been years since she had read books, an interest that used to be fulfilling but with time she just stopped. She didn't know why, not really. Life got in the way of everything, even the things she enjoyed the most.

She reached out and touched the spine of the book her mother had given her that last Christmas, the blood red cover was soft underneath her fingers. When her mother had died Kate had just started reading the book, and as she pulled it out of the book shelf she saw the bookmark sticking out on top just about twenty pages in. The title was written in bold white font across the front "Flowers for Your Grave", and the inside of the jacket was a portrait of a man who back then was about the same age as her. He looked kind, she thought, but snapped the book shut and shoved it back in the shelf before she allowed herself to think more of it.

No death, no murders, she had been through enough of that. Her finger danced over the tops of the books, pulling out a Nick Hornby book instead, one which she knew wouldn't contain death. As she put it in her backpack she made a promise to herself to read more books now that she was back in New York.

When her father had been dried up and sobered up a little with the help of food and water she left him again in the apartment. Years ago she had tried to help him get better, she had hid the alcohol, she had fought with him, pleaded with him, and nothing helped. Leaving him alone hadn't done anything either. She had run out of ways to help him, so before she left she didn't look in the refrigerator to see the beer cans lined up on a row, and she didn't pour out the last of the whiskey. In the end she realized that until he wanted to get sober himself nothing was going to change, and no matter how badly she wanted to make that decision for him it didn't work like that.

She was renting a small room off the island, and the other residents were younger than her, most college aged. None of them cared where she went during the days, or what hours she kept, and the door had a lock on it, so it was the best she could get until she had gotten a job. Now she was quickly blowing through the small saving she had, since working as a EMT didn't pay much to begin with. It hadn't been the job she wanted, it wasn't a job she particularly liked, but ten years ago she needed to make a career choice and that was the only job she could think of. She didn't hate it really, she just wished she had done something else, something more fulfilling. Twelve years ago she applied to college to become a lawyer, but dreams sometimes have a tendency to stay dreams.

It was nearing eight when Kate felt the restlessness settle into her bones. The room she was in was too little, too bare of anything that was hers that would be able to anchor her down. Her things were in storage back in California, and the little she had taken with she had yet to unpack completely. She couldn't stay there, and thought of calling some old friends from high school, but couldn't bear to face them. While being an EMT was a good job, a job with integrity, she had graduated at the top of her high school class at a school for gifted students. People who graduated from there didn't become EMTs, they worked at Wall Street, and they became lawyers, doctors, or politicians. She didn't want to explain why she was where she was now. Kate knew they wouldn't understand.

Despite not having any company she put on a black tight cocktail dress she had bought for a date with a doctor last year for a black tie event at the hospital. After it had ended he had fucked her against a wall in an examination room. Their fling never turned into much more, and just before she left to go back to New York she heard he was engaged. It was probably for the better; Kate wasn't the type of girl to get married and settle down. She was too distant and cold, and people seemed to always be running in the other direction.

She felt the heavy gaze of the men in the bar when she walked in. The bar was upscale, fancier than she could afford, but it was different from what she was used to. She wanted something different. A part of her desperately hoped that if things would be enough different from what she was used to she could jar herself awake, because it felt as if she was barely there, just floating above everything in a dream state. Nothing she touched, felt, or heard seemed to stick, it floated right through her.

The drink she had ordered sat untouched in front of her at the bar, and occasionally a man in nice clothes and tan marks on their ring finger would sit down next to her and try to engage in conversation. None of them seemed as more than passing ships in the night, a small wave shaking her boat, but none pulled her out. The past years she had slept with many men who were married, some with rings off, but many with the bands still on their fingers. She never asked about their wives, and never considered them at all because she always believed that it was the men's responsibility to do so. A few years ago she would have gone home with one of them, not caring about their shallow gazes and predatory smirks. Now she wanted something different, something with substance.

Maybe, she thought, she was being picky. People who are willing to give substance don't pick up girls at bars. They go on eHarmony or tinder, and they set up dates at restaurants that serve deserts, or they ask a coworker out. Bars are for shallow connections that are meant to be forgotten come morning light.

She downed the drink quickly after the fourth man approached her offering to buy a drink, and then ordered another one. That's when she saw him at the other side of the bar. Noticeably older, but definitely him. The haircut wasn't much different, the hair thinning a little bit, and the smile that he sent her from across the bar was eerily the same. Many people looked different in photos, but he didn't. Kate thought back to a couple of hours before in her parent's apartment, and how she had looked at the photo of this man on the jacket of one of his books. She didn't know he lived in New York.

Maybe he was it. Substance. People who write books would need some substance, she argued with herself, and smiled back at him. The smile he returned was blinding, and it almost looked as if he laughed. He didn't come over to her, like she had expected him to, and with that disappointment she finished her second drink.

Only a minute or so after she had finished it she felt a male presence beside her, and she closed her eyes and drew an anticipatory breath, preparing herself for an awkward ten minute conversation with someone who wanted a five minute (max) fuck. When Kate turned around however she was face to face with the author of the book her mother had given Kate for her last Christmas.

"I couldn't help but notice that you didn't have a drink," he said, eyes twinkling with unmasked delight as he looked at her. "I can buy you another one, if you'd like." His fingers barely touched her back as he leaned against the bar beside her, and they sent tingling sensations all through her body. He smelled nice, and looked strong.

"I would like that, yeah," she said, voice low and raspy, eyes connecting with his. They both appeared to have come to an unspoken agreement of what would happen that night.

"I'm Rick Castle," he said then, holding out his hand. The formality of it amused her, and her eyes flickered between his outstretched hand and his eyes for a brief moment before taking the hand in hers.

"And I'm Kate Beckett," she said, biting her lip to stop her smile from growing too big.

"What are you drinking then, Kate Beckett?" He was leaning towards her, showing just how tall he was and how broad shoulders he had

"Just a gin and tonic," she said, twirling a piece of hair between her fingers, but shrugged her shoulders as she said it. "I'm a simple person." Rick chuckled, and leaned closer to her.

"Hmm… Kate Beckett I think I like you." She giggled, and grasped his bicep as she did – he was strong, she noticed. He ordered two gin and tonics for them, and sat down in the bar stool next to hers. "So Kate, what brings you here alone on a Friday night?" Her shoulders tensed for just a millisecond, and she knew he had noticed by the flickering of confusion in his eyes, but then she smiled wickedly at him. There was no way she would tell the full truth, but only a version of it.

"Looking for fun." She licked her lips, imagining how his lips would feel like on hers – they looked perfect for kissing, and the small stubble on his cheeks would feel deliciously rough against her skin.

"What kind of fun?" He raised his eyebrows, and she rolled her eyes and shook his head at him.

"If you don't know what fun is by now Rick, I don't think you'll ever know." The drinks were placed in front of them then, and Rick picked up his glass and held it out for what looked like a toast. Confused she copied him, and waited expectantly.

"I think I know… but I always like learning new things." He took a sip of his drink, and watched her over the top of it. While they had been talking the room had grown smaller and hotter, and right now she just wanted him to say the words, and they'd be out of here. She didn't like public displays of affection, even when affection wasn't necessarily a part of it.

"Hmm, I like teaching." She bit her lip, and watched his Adam's apple bobble as he swallowed his drink.

"So how about you drink up that and we'll make sure we're not late for class." He grinned and his eyes glimmered when she picked up her glass and downed it.

"I'm ready," she said. From the warmth between her legs and the wetness she felt pooling there in anticipation she was more than ready.

They took a taxi to his place, and he seemed to read her cues expertly because all the way there he held a hand on her thigh stroking minute patterns which vibrated throughout her body, but he did not kiss her, and neither of them spoke. It was a one night stand not a budding romance, and feelings were not involved.

She trailed slightly behind him as they walked into the apartment complex. The man behind the counter just inside the door looked up only briefly to see who was entering the building before returning to watching a baseball game on his small TV-screen he had set up. She used to go see games with her dad, she used to know the teams the players and who was tipped to win. She hadn't watched in years now.

When they entered the elevator he stood opposite her and looked at her. She saw his eyes start at her black pumps, and up her legs to where the hem of her dress was just above her knees, following the curve of her hips, to the dip of the neckline that shoved off the top of her breasts, and up over her neck, and then her lips, cheeks, eyes, and hair that fell down her shoulders. She knew she was attractive. Men, and women, complimented her, and she never had any trouble finding a date, or in this case company for a night. She was taller than average, but even in her heels she was shorter than Rick. Height was a necessity, because she didn't like to look down on men. There was something about them being physically bigger, and knowing that they were stronger than her, that turned Kate on.

She licked her lips when the elevator stopped, walking out in front of him to make sure that he got a view of her from behind. It didn't take more than a few seconds until Kate felt his hand low on her back, his body close to hers as they walked. When he stopped them at one of the doors and fished in his pockets for the keys she reached over and under the suit jacket he was wearing and along his back. He was warm, and sturdy, and all she wanted was him between her legs.

The apartment was large, with a second floor. She thought back to the small room she was renting with the single bed with a wooden frame that squeaked every time she moved. Rick's bed would not squeak like that. When she had finished looking over the apartment in wonder she looked back at him, and he flashed that smile that she had seen on the jacket of his book earlier that day, and she remembered her mother laughing as she gave it to her.

 _"_ _When you're a lawyer it'll be a good thing to remember how the police do their job"._

Kate supposed that it was probably for the best that her mom wasn't alive to see her fail. But she didn't want to think about that, so to wipe that smile off of his face she took two strides towards him and kissed him. His lips were as smooth as she had imagined them to be, a stark contrast against the roughness of his rough stubble cheeks. The man didn't question her motives, and instead backed her up against a closet door, pressing himself against her to the protest of the frail door. He was warm, steady, and his hands pushed her dress up so that he could press himself against her completely. She rocked against him, feeling him growing harder and that was enough for her heart to start beating frantically in her chest.

The jacket was discarded of first, crumbling on the floor, and then the dark blue tie followed suit.

"I hate ties," he mumbled into the crook of her neck, which he then kissed and licked. "You know what more I hate?" he asked, looking into her frustrated eyes. She just wanted him to stop talking and start fucking. "Clothes." He reached to the side of her dress where her zipper was – he must've been studying the dress on their way over – and pulled it down. The dress seemed to fall away from her body as if it let out a sigh, exposing more of her breasts to him. He took the opportunity to push the dress down further, palming her breasts gently, brushing his thumbs across the nipples and looking at her all the time, trying to figure out what she liked.

She wanted none of that, so she grabbed the back of his head and pulled him down for a kiss, hitching her leg up against him and pushing into him. Neither of them were there to get to know each other, and she was already ready for him, so she didn't want to play games. What she wanted was for him to stop messing around, to help her wake up if only for a night. When he looked at her like that it felt like she was right back in the water drowning, the water she had come here to escape.

While hallway sex did have its merits Rick didn't feel fully comfortable with that, not with a teenaged daughter, and a mother, living with him – though both were out of town for the weekend. Instead he guided her towards the study, fully intending to get the two of them all the way into his bedroom, but when they had gotten into the study her hands were already busy with ridding him of his pants, sneaking down the front to grasp him firmly in her hand.

"Do you hate this Rick Castle?" she teased him, stroking him softly. He found himself unable to speak, so his respond was a primitive growl that followed with him backing her towards his desk instead. It had been a long while since he had used that desk for something as fun as this, and watching her sit on it with her dress around her waist and those ridiculous pumps on her feet was enough to make him want to change that.

He pushed his pants and underwear down, not even bothering to step out of them or his shoes, as she wiggled out of the tiny black thong she had been wearing. He fumbled for a second with the pockets of his pants, pulling out the small silver box he kept there. She watched him as he put the condom on, leaned back on her hands on the desk, bottom lip between her teeth. She looked like a piece of art.

She wrapped her legs around him, pushing him flat against her, a challenging look in her eye. What she wanted was to forget she had a name, and now it was his duty to help her accomplish that. He filled her up completely, and it had been months since the last time she had sex with someone. Unable to help the moan that escaped her mouth as he pushed into her again, licking the spot at the crook of her neck where her pulse was almost visible.

He pushed into her steadily, and the desk creaked softly with each push. She reached around him, grabbing onto his back to keep steady, but then let go, falling back on her elbows instead and throwing her head back as he reached deeper inside of her, which spurred him on further as he pushed harder into her.

"I'm too tall for this," he said then, pulling out of her and straightening his legs. "Turn around." He barely waited for her to react, and grabbed her by her hips to quicker turn her over, and pushing against her lower back so that she was bent over the table. He ran his hand along her spine with one hand, and guided himself inside of her again with the other.

With her heels on and her bent over the desk it gave the perfect angle for his thrusts, and as one of his hands reached around her and rubbed her as he fucked her against the desk she could no longer think or feel anything but him and the cool surface of his desk. She pushed back against him, and tried to vocalize her approval but found that her voice was gone, she could no longer control the noises that escaped her.

Stars exploded behind her eyelids as she came, and he continued to rub her and push into her, picking up his speed just slightly. As she came down from her high his thrusts became sloppier, and he grabbed her hips tightly enough to bruise as he gave one final push and came with a groan.

"Oh shit," he said, his breathing heavy as he pulled out of her, and leaned against the desk beside her. She pushed up on her elbows slightly, still weak from her orgasm, and not quite trusting her legs to carry her.

"Mhm," she hummed in agreement, trying to figure out what to do with her dress, if she should put it on again or take it off.

"That was intense," he said. Neither of them had lasted very long, and it usually took her longer than this to get off. Maybe it was because it had been so long, that she was so used to her own hand that when someone else touched her like that it set her off. Or maybe, she thought, they were just that good together. "I don't know about you but I need to lie down… my bed's over there." He pointed to the second doorway in the study, and sure enough there was a large made bed, which surprisingly wasn't overtly masculine. He took off his shoes and shook off his pants, and then picked them up as he went towards the room, leaving her behind. His ass was toned, and she could see why he was able to keep the pace he had kept going, and she leaned back for a second to watch him walk.

No, she thought, she wasn't going to put on her dress just yet.

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 **A/N:** Smut is not really my thing, but it is fun to write and it's important for the story. And "Beckett!EMT" may be a little OOC, but hang in there… I started writing this story in late 2014 sometime, and I've got a couple of chapters written. I will publish as often as I can, but writing takes time which I don't always have.

Reviews are always welcome! :)


	2. Chapter 2

_Honey, you're familiar like my mirror years ago  
Idealism sits in a prison, chivalry fell on its sword  
Innocence died screaming, honey, ask me I should know  
I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door_

HOIZER – From Eden

 **Chapter 2 – Conception**

* * *

He watched her when she walked into the bedroom, this time her dress was gone and left behind in the study. Her feet were bare. There was a softened look in his eyes, as if he saw what was inside of her, the thing she wanted to keep hidden, only this time she couldn't crash her lips against his and fuck him again. He wasn't eighteen years old, so it didn't work like that.

"Are you cold?" he asked when she shivered slightly under the scrutiny of his gaze. She shrugged her shoulders. She was aware of the absurdity of denying it, but appearing weak was something she had never allowed herself, even if it was of something as silly as a being chilled by a breeze. "Get under the covers."

The two of them crawled under the thick down covers, and Kate almost felt herself melt against the bed. It was nothing like the bed in the room she rented, and even so miles from the bed she had back in California. She just managed to stop the moan from leaving her mouth, but couldn't stop the smile. He was nice, seemed like someone with substantial. This wouldn't be a night she would look back at with nausea and regret – she had already had too many of those types of nights.

Kate watched him across the bed where he laid silently, fully aware that she was watching him. She knew that from the small smirk that curled his lips.

"You're an author," she said, and he turned his head to look at her, propping himself up with one hand.

"Yes, I am," he said, and smiled back at me. "Have you read any of my books?"

"No," she said honestly, thinking of the book she had back home at her parents. She would've read it in days, if not in a day if things had turned out differently. She would have hid herself away in her room reading it from cover to cover. "A little of one."

"Why'd you stop?" He seemed to be a mixture of interested and wounded. It was one thing to not buy or read his books, but to read a little and then chose not to continue was a low blow. Rick rarely stopped reading a book once he had started it, only on very few occasions did he put a book down and not get back to it. Only two times had he decided to quit a book.

"Life," she said and turned her head to look at the ceiling. She wanted to retract what she said, because life didn't stop her, that was a lie, it was death. Somehow she knew that the writer would understand what she meant, but she didn't want to become someone who was wounded in his eyes. All Kate wanted was to forget, and few men would listen to a story of her mother's murder and then fuck her like she wanted them to. Only men who were bad for her would, and she had a feeling Rick Castle wasn't that type of man.

"I see," he said in a way that made her understand that he didn't see. It was something she was used to, and she knew how to handle that part. She looked at him and smiled.

"Why do you write?" she asked, twisting her body so that she laid on her side facing him, and he copied her.

"That's a heavy question," he said. Kate furrowed her eyebrows at him, and he chuckled at her confusion. "Most people ask 'why did you start writing?'" He sighed and trailed off, deep in thought, and after a long silence he opened his mouth. "I had all these ideas jumping around in my head, and it felt like I was going to explode if I didn't get them down, I couldn't think properly, keep still – still can't really – so I decided to write them down."

"How many books have you written?" He let out a long breath.

"Published or total?"

"Published," she said. The look on his face was adorable, she thought, as he closed one eye and scrunched his face up as he calculated in his head. She almost giggled at the sight.

"Around 22, I can't keep count anymore." He shrugged, as if it wasn't a big deal.

"That's a lot," she said, trying to figure out how long he had been an author, and how many books he would've had to give out a year to make that number. "How many books do you give out in a year?"

"One year I had four books published, and none of them were particularly good, I'm not doing that again, so right now I'm at around two books a year, so I keep busy," he said with a smile. "I try to stay at home more, since my daughter is at that age where she might start considering to get into trouble, but she's a really sweet and smart kid… it's other people I don't trust."

"How old is your daughter?" she asked. She didn't know he had a daughter, but it made sense with the size of the place. No single childless bachelor would live in a place as vast as this in New York.

"She's fifteen, turns sixteen in a couple of months." He was smiling as he talked, something Kate liked to think her father did when he talked about her, but she doubted he did that anymore.

"She sounds like a sweet kid," she commented, watching his face light up in an unadulterated smile.

"She's the best." He looked so proud it made her heart ache watching him. That kid of his was lucky. "How about you?"

"Kids? No I don't have any," she said, and shook her head quickly. "None." She had no intentions of changing that anytime soon, if ever.

"No I mean… what do you do?" It was a simple enough question, but the answer she would give wouldn't be the answer she wanted to say. It wasn't lawyer, and it wasn't homicide detective. Kate had given up on those dreams ten years ago, when she ran away scared instead of facing everything.

"I'm an EMT," she said. She could've lied, told him that she was something else entirely, but he seemed so open and honest with her that she couldn't pretend with him. Kate had a feeling he'd see right through her, anyway.

"I wouldn't have guessed that," he said, a soft gaze lingering on her. She closed her eyes, unable to take the affection she saw in his eyes.

"Well, EMTs hang out at bars too you know." She laughed, hoping to lighten the mood, and cut through the tension in the room. It grew claustrophobic, and she would run away if he didn't stop soon.

"Apparently they do," he said. "Hot EMTs…" he commented, as if to himself, and she opened her eyes to see him openly check her out. She couldn't help to giggle at him. "I'm a red blooded man Kate, and there is a naked hot EMT lying in my bed." She squealed when he reached across and grabbed her stomach, his hands accidentally tickling her as he pulled her towards him.

"Hmm, so EMTs huh?" She hitched one leg over one of his, squinting at him.

"Hot EMTs," he corrected her, palming her ass. "Hot… naked… EMTs," he said in between kisses, grabbing her ass and pulling her up towards him, allowing him better access to her mouth. She opened her mouth against his. She trailed her hand down his torso and towards his cock – he wasn't fully hard yet, but he groaned into her mouth as she grasped him in her hand, and stroked him steadily as she kissed him. She pushed her tongue into his mouth, brushing it against his. He still tasted tangy after the drink earlier.

Feeling him grow in her hands, and rocking up against her, gave a sense of pride. She loved that she could do this, and that she could turn men on like this. It made her feel in control over something. Their desire spurred on her own desire, but it did more than that. Everything in her life was spinning, and it was becoming harder to hold on. Either she needed to fall off, or something had to slow things down. This made her feel as if she had the power to hang on, the power to slow down the carousel just a little.

She pulled away from his mouth, planting kisses along his jaw, and nibbling his ear with his teeth and grinning with delight when he hissed in response. This she knew how to do. Kissing down his neck she felt him grow harder in her hand, and in response to him kneading her ass harder she rocked herself against his thigh and biting at the skin of his chest. He seemed to freeze completely as she did, but didn't protest. She sat up slightly and grinned at him, and he looked back at her with dark eyes, and without a moment hesitation he flipped her over onto her back.

Despite trying to stop her mind from wandering she couldn't stop her thoughts from delving into territory she tried to keep hidden from herself. The way he looked down at her made the unwelcome images flash back to her, of what happened just a few weeks after her mother's death. She had gone back to Stanford for the semester, and the guy she had been dating back then. For weeks Kate had tried to trick herself into carrying on like she used to before. Just because her mom had died didn't mean that she had. Kate convinced herself that locking it away and pretending her mother was still alive back home was how people coped, because the idea of living another day without her mother was too much for her.

At first the guy she was dating, Finn, went along with it because he was young and in love, and he got laid a lot. After a while when she didn't get any better with coping with it he grew uneasy, until that day when she tried to initiate sex and pulled him on top of her, and he only looked down on her like Rick was looking down on her.

 _"_ _Kate… I don't think this is helping you."_

He didn't know anything, he was a child, Kate thought, and wrapped her arms around Rick's head instead and pulled him down towards her. Make me forget, Kate thought, parting her legs so that he could fit between them. Chase Finn away. Parting from the kiss he reached towards the bedside drawer and pulled out a condom, fumbling under the covers to put it on as she watched him. He was strangely beautiful she thought, and she knew that she hadn't even scratched the surface of him yet. Maybe if she had been different she would've got the opportunity to explore that, but had she been different she wouldn't have been here in the first place.

He pushed inside her, more gentle this time, bowing his head down to kiss her. She pushed against him, coaxing him into a less tender pace. If she wanted tender she would be in a relationship. Tender was for people who cared for each other, and tender was for those who wished to remember.

"Faster," she breathed into his ear, rocking her hips up against him again. "Ugh, yes." She moaned as he heeded her wish, and she locked her legs around him. He chuckled in response but kept the pace up, holding himself up on his elbows above her as he kissed her. The pace wasn't as punishing and desperate as it had been before, promising to last longer than just a couple of minutes.

"Fuck," he said as she rocked against him again, his head falling down on her shoulder, but his pace didn't change. He grabbed a hold of her legs and pulled them up higher and tighter against him, changing the angle again to where she could do no more than feel him, him, and him everywhere. All she could smell was the musky scent of him, all that she could hear was his grunting and breathing, and the smacking of skin against skin. To be so completely lost in a person was all she ever wanted, but in that moment she could barely form a coherent thought beyond this, beyond him.

The primitiveness of men when they came always got to her. The way he pushed in to her to get so impossibly close, and the shuddering groan he emitted. She kept her legs tight against him as he came, pulling him in and holding him there, and then watching his face relax, looking properly sated as he almost collapsed down on her.

As he pulled out she felt a strange sort of wetness between her legs, and before he was able to react she reached between her legs to feel the stickiness. No, she thought, panic gripping like knives at her heart. He saw the alarm in her eyes and both of them looked down – it had broken.

"Shit, fuck, fuck, fuck shit!" she yelled as she leaped out of bed, desperately looking around for something to wipe the semen that was dripping down her things off with. It was too late, she knew that, she had delivered babies so of course she knew that, but she had to do something! She looked down at herself and then down at Rick who was still lying in bed, and looked as if he still had not realized the gravity of the situation. "You don't have any…?"

"No, no… I always use condoms and it's never… this has never happened before." He pulled the broken condom off with a bewildered look. "You're on the pill or something, right?" He looked up at her, she was still standing there biting her lip and looking at the ground. "Right?"

"No," she said. "I'm not." She hadn't been on the pill for months, not since she broke it off with the doctor, and when she was thinking about going back on them she was in the middle of a move and had no desire to fit a doctor's appointment in with it. She was supposed to see someone next week.

"Oh okay." He leaned back on his elbows and looked ahead of him. "Alright."

"I'll get the plan b tomorrow, and uh… shit." She hid her head in her hands. She didn't want to tell him but she was pretty sure that she was supposed to be ovulating around this time, and if she had then it was already too late. It could take a lot of tries to get pregnant though, it didn't mean that she was. Once was bad luck, and the chances were slim. But once could also be enough.

"Kate," he said, now sitting up in the bed, "come here." He patted the spot beside him on the bed. "There is nothing we can do now, and I've been through something like this before with Alexis, and I was a lot younger then. It will work out." She sighed but did as he said and crawled under the covers again.

"Regardless what happens there is nothing we can do at 2am, the nearest pharmacy open at this hour is blocks away from here… I'll buy it tomorrow after we eat, okay?" There was little she could do at this hour, and the last thing she wanted to do was walk out of here alone and back to her small room off the island, or to her dad who was probably passed out on the couch. "Now we sleep."

How he could be so calm about it was beyond her. It was probably because it wasn't him that risked a pregnancy, who would have to deal with the consequences regardless of what they were. Even so she laid down next to him, and he pulled her towards him and spooning her. Despite that that type of affection was the least of what she wanted, it was also comforting, and exactly what she needed. She just didn't want it with him, but someone else. She wanted it to be her father that hugged her, not a stranger named Rick who she had fucked before she even knew how old he was.

He relaxed quickly against her, and soon she could hear snores. It irked her how nonchalant he was about it, because even if he had gone through this before it still wasn't something that became less real or less serious. What if she was pregnant now? How could she sleep knowing that it was a very real possibility? She had her cycles tracked on her phone, but the phone was out in the hall with his jacket, and the longer she thought about it the more certain she was that she was right in the middle of her cycle. Right where she should have stayed at home and sucked it up, not done this.

Back when she was a teenager her mother had instilled fear in her about getting pregnant. Her mother had always been open with her about sex and babies were made, but when Kate started acting out, and exploring boundaries her mother had sat her down and explained the situation; Kate was allowed to do what she wanted because it was her body, but if she came home before graduating college and saying that she was pregnant then her parents would be deeply disappointed. "You don't waste your intelligence, Kate," her mother had told her. "Go to school and live. I will never regret waiting for you."

Despite being an adult now, and she had gotten her associate's years ago – not the bachelor her mother had been talking about, but still a diploma – she still felt as if she had disappointed her mother.

Even if the plan b didn't work there were still options. She didn't have to go through with it. Becoming a mother had never been on her mind, and she had never seen herself as a baby person. After everything she had done, how she had lived her life up until this point, Kate saw herself as one of the least suitable people to raise a child. She looked over her shoulder at the sleeping Rick and hoped he wasn't opposed to it, because if he was she knew she would be the one to break his heart. This was only supposed to be a night to escape everything, not creating more collateral damage along the way.

* * *

A/N: smut is still something I'm learning to write... so what do you think? Castle is a bit OOC here but we'll get to him, he's been playing a role.

Thoughts, questions, opinions? I'd love to hear what you think of this :) Thanks for all the follows, favorities, and thanks for the reviews!


	3. Chapter 3

**A/n:** thanks for all of the reviews, I'm going to reply to all of you soon, and it's nice to see so many people wanting to follow this story! This chapter contains a bit of character information about Beckett that I want to adress before so that you guys don't think less of "my Kate", or think I believe that sort of thing is okay: Beckett is depressed and she knows she probably is but doesn't want to seek help she "stares down the darkness" instead. In this story I want to depict another side of depression which is kind of ugly, and doesn't romanticise the person who is depressed. Depressed people can be really shitty people at times. Kate is a good person who has been struggling a long time. So I hope you can be sympathetic to that part of her backstory in this fic.

With that said I hope your summer (if you're in the northern hemisphere) is more summer-like than it is here... we've yet to get back 20C.

* * *

 _Where do we go from here?  
How do we carry on?  
I can't get beyond the questions.  
Clambering for the scraps  
In the shatter of us collapsed  
It cuts me with every could-have-been_

IMOGEN HEAP – Wait It Out

 **Chapter 3 – Morning After**

In the morning he made her breakfast just as he had promised while she checked her phone. Theresa her old co-worker had sent her a text asking how she was doing, and there was one missed call from her dad. One call from him wasn't bad, it was pretty normal for him to call her in the middle of the night when he was drunk, it was the nights when he called over and over again which worried her. She wondered what type of father Rick was. Was he the affectionate father, or was he the distant one? As he worked over the stove making eggs and bacon she figured that the former was more likely than the latter.

How old was he? She caught herself wondering. Despite having a nearly sixteen year old daughter he appeared young, so he must have been in his early twenties when he had her. He had to be in his late thirties or early forties. He didn't look older than that, and he couldn't be much younger.

"Here eat," he said as he put a fried egg on her plate along with some bacon and a toast. "I'm going to fry some tomatoes, want some too?" She nodded as she took a bite of bacon, and it was perfectly crispy without tasting burnt. He must definitely be a family man, she thought as she smiled to herself.

Before breakfast he had insisted on her borrowing the shower to let her wash the dirt, grime and sweat away. The pressure in the shower had been something amazing, and the soaps he had hinted that she wasn't the only female company he had had lately. She had worried that he might look at her different without the makeup, and that he wouldn't find her as attractive, but the smile he gave her was just as big as the night before.

He moved around the kitchen with practiced ease, assembling breakfast as it was his specialty.

"Here you go," he said, putting fried tomatoes on her plate. "Does it taste alright?" he asked, and she nodded eagerly, wolfing down the food. Since she moved back to New York a few days ago she hadn't eaten a good meal. Most of what she had been eating was sandwiches, half fabricated TV dinners. A cooked hot meal was divine at this point.

"It's delicious," she said once she'd swallowed. "The bacon is perfect." She blushed, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair.

"Glad you liked it." He sat down on the bar stool next to her with his own plate of food, and the two of them continued to eat in comfortable silence. Last night seemed far away from the two of them, like it was some dream they had conjured up together, and it was slowly disappearing into fog the longer they stayed awake. It hadn't been a dream though. The condom had broken, and according to her phone she was due to ovulate yesterday, which meant that unless her cycle had been thrown off course by the move there was a risk that she was indeed pregnant. It was at times like this she hated being a health care professional, because these were things you learnt quickly when you around people, and 9 years doing that meant you knew really well.

"I keep this app on my phone that tells me when my period's due, and when I'm most likely ovulating, and… I just want to prepare you because the plan b might not work then," she said, and bit the inside of her cheek as she waited for him to reply.

"Kate I meant what I said last night, it will work itself out, and I'll be here… I would never run from this," he said. This, like a child, this like a baby, this like a pregnancy, this like parenting, and this like the two of them being parents together, she thought.

"If I'm pregnant Rick… I don't think I'm going to go through it anyway," she said, and looked down on her plate so that she would not have to see his reaction to what she was saying. "My life is not suited for a baby, and neither am I." She glanced over at him, but there was no reaction registered on his face.

"I have a daughter Kate, and that means that even though I don't like that sort of thing… It's your choice." The silence that was comfortable before was now stiff as the two of them returned to their meals. She considered his words, the unspoken admission that he would like her to go through with it, if she was pregnant, and peered over at him again.

"Thank you," she said, and smiled at him. The smile he sent back was reassuring and soft.

Later as the two of them tidied up in the kitchen the lock in the door jingled as someone unlocked it, and Rick shot one alarmed look at her, and then hurried towards the door while Kate remained in the kitchen confused.

"Alexis! What are you doing home so early?" Rick's voice reached a pitch that Kate was surprised he could reach.

"Got sick, you didn't pick up, Lucy's mom had to drop me off…" Kate heard the girl mumble miserably, and then as the father daughter duo turned the corner Kate noticed how pale the girl's face was. Rick definitely had a sick child on his hands. "Who're you?" Alexis had stopped halfway to the kitchen and looked at Kate with similar furrowed eyebrows as Rick.

"I'm Kate," she said, acutely aware that she was wearing Rick's shirt and boxers, which was not at all inconspicuous.

"Hi Kate," Alexis said, and continued to slowly walk forward.

"You should drink flat coke, and toasted white bread, and grated apples… don't drink water, but you need to stay hydrated," Kate blurted out, and the girl stopped again and looked between Kate and Rick with a deepening confusion.

"Kate is an EMT," Rick explained.

"Least she's not a 'lottery supervisor'," the girl said and made air quotes in the air. "Good morning, I'm going to bed."

"Good morning," Kate called after her as the girl walked up the stairs, wincing as the girl only replied by waving the back of her hand. At least, Kate thought, the girl was much nicer than she herself had been at that age. Had her father been single and dating she would have torn the women alive had she found them like this in the morning.

"I'm sorry, she's usually a bit more…" Rick started to explain, but Kate waved it off.

"She's a nice kid Rick, nothing to apologize for… if you have to stay home I can take care of this myself." A part of her wanted him to leave her alone, to let her deal with this without him because with him around she couldn't break down, not yet. She knew that it was coming, because it followed like a looming cloud, yet she could still keep herself above water when he was around. The way he was with his daughter, her very presence, was enough of a reminder of what she lacked in her life, and what she would never get back. At fifteen her mother sat on her bed and felt her forehead for fever, but at nineteen she was mopping up her father's vomit from the kitchen floor. Contrasts, contrasts… she turned back to the sink and picked up the plate she had been washing, and went back to scrubbing it.

"I made a promise Kate, I'm just going to make sure she's tucked in before we go anywhere," he said behind her.

"Okay." She put the washed plate up on the drying rack, but kept her back turned to him as she heard him ascend the stairs.

Kate had been 18, she remembered that. It had been the week before graduation and her friend Lauren had dragged Kate to the pharmacy. They had stood in front of a shelf next to the tampons, with boxes in cool pink and blue tones with the words HPT spelled out in bold letters across from them. While her friend had pulled out boxes, and read the back of them with a panicking frenzy Kate stood back and bit her thumb. Lauren used the bathroom at the Mcdonald's down the street from the pharmacy while Kate stood outside. It was absurd, Kate had been thinking, inspecting her make-up and calling out phony encouraging words and phrases as her friend squatted over the toilet behind her. It had never occurred to Kate that the test could be positive, because that type of thing didn't happen to them, but then the stick turned blue. Lauren disappeared after that, and the last week of high school she was like a ghost in the hallways.

A week after her mother's death she somehow found out that Lauren had given birth to a daughter. Kate never went to see her.

It was 11 years ago since that happened now, but Kate wondered if she was about to find out how Lauren felt back then. Lauren was only 18 when she became a mother, she wasn't nearly 30 like Kate. Of course it wasn't similar, Kate chided herself. 30 year old women were supposed to want relationships, marriages, and children. They were not supposed to be running to the pharmacy on a Saturday morning to buy an emergency pill after a one night stand. Sex and the City may have made it a bit less taboo, but that was still a TV-series where things were always more okay. This was real life.

She leaned against the counter and looked over the apartment. The apartment was large, as she had noted the night before, and while it had an air of sophistication surrounding it, it was still cozy. The colors were muted, and books were a central piece in the decoration of it. From where she was standing she could see the dining area, the living room, and into the study where the desk was still a mess from last night's activities. She blushed at the thought of it knowing that it was a place he and his family would walk past daily.

Looking down on her body she wanted to change back into her own clothes, preferably her own comfortable yoga pants and large sweat shirt. While Rick's clothes were very comfortable, once his daughter had returned home they became awkward.

Only a few minutes after he'd left her in the kitchen he returned downstairs again, giving her a reassuring smile.

"Wanna get dressed and get out of here?" She nodded eagerly in reply, and followed him towards his bedroom.

He had insisted on letting her borrow a sweat shirt of his, because while it was warm enough to go without a jacket he had noticed her shifting awkwardly in the dress she was wearing. To make sure that he would get it back he scheduled a lunch date for two weeks from then. He said it was because he was busy with promotion and writing up until then, but it coincided neatly with when her period would be due. It wasn't anything she needed to comment about, since it was nice of him to be concerned, and the sweater was comfortable. Back in high school she would borrow the sweatshirts of her boyfriends, and then wouldn't return them. Usually they were cheap ones they'd probably gotten at Walmart, but there was the occasional college one she would keep in her possession. It wasn't that she refused to give them back, the boys seemed to forget about them and she didn't tell them about it. She wondered if she should do the same with this one, because from the looks of it in his closet it didn't look like he would miss it. It smelled nice and clean, and something distinctly him that she remembered from the night before.

They walked to the pharmacy side by side, their fingers just barely brushing against the others from time to time. It was like something straight out of middle school, if it weren't for the reason they were walking towards the pharmacy.

He paid for the pills with no question about it, and she was thankful for that, because with the drinks the night before, and the cab ride back off the island she was already stretching herself thin. There was a job interview she was scheduled for on Monday morning, so hopefully she would soon have an income again. The 60 dollar emergency pill was handed over to her by him, and she grasped it in her hand and shoved it in her pocket. If she started to feel nauseous from the pill she didn't want to be stuck in a moving car.

"You can call me, whenever, on this number," he said, and scrawled down his number on a piece of paper resting against his thigh. "And… call me, okay?" Call me if you're pregnant, call me if you're not; she knew what he meant.

"I will, I promise," she said, and got into the taxi that was standing waiting for her. She told him her address and then waved to Rick who was still standing outside the taxi. She knew he stood there watching the taxi drive off, and she didn't want to turn around and see him standing there.

What did this man think she was good for? She had nothing to offer him but a broken heart. Behind her she left a path of destruction because she couldn't do these types of things. Love was a poison that suffocated her slowly, pulled her under and refused to let go. Love made a person vulnerable, fragile, it had the ability to crush a person with a summer breeze. She was a tornado. That was what one of her exes described her as. Volatile, chaotic, and a bitch, that's what he called her when they broke it off. It had been years, she had only been about twenty-four back then, but the worlds still stung years later.

 _"_ _You're a fucking tornado Kate, you just fuck shit up and then you leave, you coldhearted fucking bitch."_

Then she had only stared back at him, and crawled under a blanket in her mind and she felt as if her feelings had been given Novocain. He had been furious with her, and all she could do was look at him. Their relationship had been brief, like all relationships she'd ever had. Barely long enough to make a notice of, nothing you would tell people about. He had fucked her only in missionary, and it had made her body and mind restless, and to keep herself from screaming and falling apart she had accepted his roommate's invitation. The way he reacted had been expected, and she had wanted to reach out and scream back at him, but she had no right to. She didn't know why she did what she did, she didn't know how to deal with any of this in any other way.

How long would it take before she wrecked Rick? It was inevitable, and she had a feeling it would only take until the next time they saw each other for that to happen.

When she entered the apartment it was near one o'clock and one of the girls who lived in the apartment was sitting on the couch curled up under a blanket and watching a movie on her laptop. The girl, whose name she hadn't bothered to remember, looked up at her, and then down at the dress she was wearing, which she'd seen Kate leave with on last night.

"Lucky girl," the girl said, clicking her tongue approvingly. "Four days in the city…" Kate rolled her eyes when the girl returned to the movie, and then walked to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. When she'd arrived a few days before the girls in the apartment had all been there, and at the time she had thought it was a coincidence, but since then she hadn't seen any of them in a room together. None of them had actually offered to help her move in, one girl named Charlotte helped with a box of books, but she had to leave for class.

It wasn't like she had expected to find friends amongst early 20-something college students, but she hadn't expected the roommates to be quite as distant from each other as they were. College was, from what she remembered of the first semester at Stanford, where you made friends for life, and your roommates were typically people you were at least somewhat close with. Taking in a woman who was nearly 30 also seemed like an odd choice to her, but she had been clear from the beginning that this was only temporary; once she had a job she would be out of there.

She waited until she was back in her room with the door locked behind her before she pulled the box out of the hoodie. One expensive pill was in that box, and the box was ridiculously large for the little content the box had. She pulled it out quickly and downed it without a second thought. In two weeks she would call Rick and cancel the lunch date because then she would've gotten her period, and everything would be back to normal.

Two days later she sat in an empty employee lounge room to a small clinic, with an HR manager seated opposite the rounded table with a smile on her face. Kate had only been through a handful of job interviews in her lifetime, and the last one she had was over eight years ago, which meant her nerves were on edge – she needed this job desperately, she could not afford to be passed over.

"You have good credentials from your previous job, and a very nice letter of recommendation… did you enjoy your previous work place?" the woman asked, the smile on her face turning a bit more stiff.

"Yes, it was a good job, and I had really nice partners, the last one I had for over 4 years," Kate said, and did her best to smile back at the woman.

"How come you moved to New York?" The woman was writing something down on a form in front of her.

"For my dad," she lied. "California was so far away from my family, and I missed him." An alcoholic dad doesn't give you a job, it means that you won't be as flexible with hours as you'd need to be, and it means that a 'sick day' might as well be a 'my father cut himself on a shard of glass and I have to baby sit him now'. Alcoholic fathers meant time away from work.

"That's nice." The woman's smile was genuine that time, jutting down a few lines on the paper. The interview continued at the same pace, and felt more like a formal conversation than anything else. When it ended about an hour later the woman shook her hand and said that she liked what she had heard, but that she would have to check back with her later to see if they could offer her a position with the NYFD. The work would be very similar to what she did back in California, which definitely qualified her for a position here, but it still was not a guarantee. It only took a couple of hours after she had left the clinic until the woman called her up and formally offered her a job.

Immediately she started looking at apartments that she could sublet that weren't too far from the station. One bedroom apartment and studios were well sought after, but with a bit of luck she knew she could find something decent. With the first week on the job where she was busy learning the routines, where she could find everything, their policy, and getting to know the people she would be working with, she kept herself busy enough to nearly forget Rick completely.

There was something about throwing herself into work that made it easier to pretend that life didn't exist beyond that. If she didn't have time to think about things, it would be as if they didn't existed. Still, she could not ignore her father, and pretend he did not exist and lived in the same city as her. She went back to his apartment the Sunday after her job interview, hoping to find him before he had drunk too much. Luck, she found, wasn't on her side in that respect. She found him sitting on the couch yelling at a game on the TV, and his speech was already slurred.

"Katie!" he shouted when he saw her, and tried to stand up from the couch but fell back again on it. "Come here and let me look at you." He waved her over with big hand gestures, and eagerly patted the spot next to him on the couch. "Come." She sat down gingerly, as far away from him as she could on the couch, trying to ignore the smell of alcohol and sweat coming from him.

"Hey dad." She smiled awkwardly and waved her hand, pointedly keeping her distance.

"Wow, you look so beautiful, you look… you look so much like your mother." Tears were brimming his eyes, but instead of crying he took a large sip of the glass he had in front of him. More whiskey, she guessed. "You've been gone a long time Katie."

"Yeah, I know… but I'm back now dad." She reached across the couch and brushed the grey locks away from his face. All her childhood he had kept his hair neatly trimmed, and said that a man's haircut told you nearly everything you needed to know about him. Now she guessed he hadn't had it cut in months.

"About time." She sighed, and settled back on the couch, looking at the game but not paying any attention to what was happening. Her gaze focused on a piece of paper instead that was lying on the coffee table. Sitting on the edge of the couch she leaned over and read the headline on it.

"Dad, what is this?" She picked it up and skimmed the text.

"Neighbors been complaining, they say I need to move." He only shrugged his shoulder, as if he didn't really care about it.

"But this… you've bought this apartment dad!" He and her mother had bought it together when she was still a baby, and this was the apartment she grew up in. There was no way she was going to let her father just move from it without a fight.

"They're assholes Katie, they're just assholes," he said in a biting tone to her, clenching his jaw and furrowing his eyebrows into a menacing look, the one she hated. "You should move in here, keep me out of trouble." His face relaxed again, and he reached across the couch and squeezed her knee. "I miss you Kit-Kat." She hated when he called her that, because that's what he would call her when he picked her up from preschool and he'd buy her an ice cream because the teachers only sung praises of her. This wasn't that man, and she didn't want to conflate the two. She didn't want to tarnish the good memories.

"I can't dad," she said, shrinking back against the couch. There was no words to explain how badly she wanted to be that person who could do it, the type of daughter who would selfishly move in with her dad and take care of him. When it came down to it she wasn't that type of person, and she had proven that when she ran back to California eight years ago, leaving him here in New York alone.

"Then what the fuck are you doing here then?" He jerked his hand away from her leg. "Are you here to just pity me? I don't need your pity Kathrine, I raised you!" He drained the glass of whiskey, and with a shaky hand he poured himself a new class. "Get out."

"Dad…" she started, but he interrupted her.

"I said get out!" he growled, and she fumbled after her bag that was lying on the floor, tears were prickling her eyes. As Kate ran down the stairs she kept thinking about her mother, and what would she think of the two of them now? This would have been unacceptable for her, but she was dead, and Kate figured that the opinion of the dead were irrelevant.

She thought of the book with the red cover in her childhood bedroom, the one Rick Castle had written. Maybe it was time for her to read it? Maybe it had been a sign meeting him the weekend before that she hadn't come back to continue running, but to return and move on?

Feeling as if she was about to leap off a cliff with a rope tied around her waist that she wasn't sure was going to hold she considered the alternatives; continue pretending, or face reality head-on. She wasn't ready to make a choice yet, but knew that soon she would be forced to.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/n** : so here's chapter 4! I've been super busy lately with work, family, and all that. I've gotten half of chapter 8 and 9 written, but I won't be updating until I've finished with chapter 10. This is so that I am sure that I will be able to keep updating throughout July (which will be an even more hectic month). Hope summer is treating you all well so far! If you want to follow me on social media you can find my fandom tumblr at redkiera dot tumblr dot com :)

Also I'm a middle class girl, so if I depict this "fancy restaurant" wrong then it's because I've only ever walked past them.

* * *

 _Something is scratching its way out_  
 _Something you want to forget about_  
 _No one expects you to get up_  
 _All on your own without no one around_

THE FRAY – Little House

 **Chapter 4 - Test**

The restaurant they were meeting at was much like the bar they'd met at; fancy. Kate was sure that one decent meal would cost about as much as three meals at the diner across the street from the apartment she shared with the college students. From the text Rick had sent her she knew he would be seated further into the restaurant. She avoided the gaze of what she assumed to be a server, and navigated herself towards the back where the air was a bit cooler and the light a bit dimmer.

She was underdressed compared to the rest of the women there, despite the blue button up blouse she had bought on impulse the day before. She found him sitting in a secluded corner of the restaurant which wasn't as packed as it was in the front. It was been a warm day so most people were doing their best to stay close to sunlight before the temperature cooled off again. He was wearing a thin light blue shirt, and the bridge of his nose was reddened, revealing that had most probably spent most of the morning and early afternoon outside without any sunscreen on.

When he caught sight of her his face lit up completely, and he stood up to pull out her chair for her. She awkwardly sat down on the chair and pushed it in at the same time as he did, causing her to jolt forward and crash into the table.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" he said, sheepishly looking around to make sure no one noticed the commotion.

"It's okay, we're probably both…" she said, but trailed off instead. Nervous was probably the right word, but it didn't feel as if it quite fit whatever she was feeling about this. "Hi, by the way." She laughed, but it was too flat to come off as genuine.

"Hello," he said, smiling back at her with the same awkwardness. "Have you been here before?"

"No, this is my first time…" she said, looking around the restaurant once more. "I actually just moved back here like three weeks ago." A waiter handed the two of them menus, interrupting their small talk by informing them of the day's special, and the wine that went with them, before leaving them to decide what to order. Kate glanced at the menu and while they didn't serve a lot of different foods what they did serve made little sense to her. The only thing she knew she would like of it was the pasta carbonara, the rest seemed dubious to her. She was sure that in her other life where her mother was alive she would've know this type of food, and she would've moved in the circles of the people who sat at the front of the restaurant. She would have known that her blue blouse and dark wash jeans were underdressed.

"You said you just moved _back_ here?" Rick asked, pulling her out of her thoughts. She looked back up at him, and she looked him over once more. Each time she saw him he looked kind, like someone she could trust, and she tried to convince herself that he wasn't. The way he looked at her with softness and genuine interest she made her start to believe he actually was like he seemed.

"Yes, I lived in northern California for 8 years," she said, and took a sip of the water that had been put out before she had gotten there. It was still cold.

"Oh, where in California?" he asked, leaning forward against the table.

"San Jose, actually… I went there first at 18, and then went back when I was 20, I guess I fell in love with it." She shrugged, eyeing the menu again, pretending as if she hadn't made up her mind already.

"Did you go to college there?" he asked, the calm smile still on his face. It seemed natural on there, not forced or worn. She bet that the first wrinkles he would get would be those laughter wrinkles, and she smiled minutely at the thought.

"Yeah, actually I studied one semester at Stanford, and then I transferred to NYU." Usually she would lie, say something about wanting to explore the country, and that she had waited a year before going to college, because that worked out with when she got her associate's.

"Wow, so I guess you're pretty smart then?" His eyes twinkled, and she wanted so badly to be the person she would've been had she finished studying at Stanford, if just in that moment.

"Well, I guess I was smart." She shrugged. Smart was something you had to keep up with, not a stamp you got once and then you always had it. Smart wasn't what she was doing. Plenty of her coworkers were smart, but they had their lives together somehow, someway, with families and dreams which they achieved. What she was doing with her life wasn't smart.

"You didn't graduate from NYU?" he asked, figuring out what she had hoped he wouldn't.

"No, I didn't… I guess I… well I went back to San Jose and got my associate's there, and then I stayed." She shrugged her shoulders again. It was a long story, and it wasn't a story she wanted to tell him over lunch, and especially not this lunch. "What did you study in college?"

"English lit," he said and looked a little sheepish. "Is that very cliché?"

"For an author maybe, yes." She couldn't help but giggle at is mock horrified expression.

After ordering food they talked about his college experiences, and in particular how he the day of his 21st birthday decided that the Old Haunt was the place to be, and subsequently spent nearly every day there for the rest of his time at college, to the dismay of his girlfriend and friends at the time. It was the place where he finished his first novel, he injected with at the end, so it wasn't all for nothing.

When the pasta carbonara was placed in front of her, and some kind of linguine pasta with prawns and in front of him, the two of them looked at each other with a heavy pause. They knew why they were there, why it hadn't ended at one night which they both knew had been the intention. She suspected that he knew what she would say already, since she hadn't said anything about it yet. It didn't mean anything, she told herself, and right now it could still be nothing. She took a sip of water to swallow down the lump that appeared in her throat. Crying wouldn't make her look more presentable in this restaurant.

The easy small talk they had kept doing before the food had arrived faded, and they ate quietly while sneaking glances at the other occasionally.

Kate hadn't googled him before meeting him, despite being curious. The two of them were on the same page when it came to each other. Maybe he had googled her and found an old article about her mother, but he didn't seem to know that part about her. People who knew got that shielded look before their eyes, as if they're about to step too close to a tragedy that was contagious. Her appetite was slowly diminishing the more she thought about it, and she only took four bites before she put down the fork and spoon, and placed her hands in her lap.

"I've got a test… in my bag," she said, glancing down at the bag she had placed at her feet. "I was going to take it this morning, but I chickened out." He pushed the pasta around on his plate for a few seconds before putting it down on the plate as well, and looked up at her non-smiling.

"I'd like to be there when you…" he trailed off, and glanced down at her stomach.

"Okay."

Neither of them had much of an appetite after that, so Rick paid for the meal and got them doggy bags to take with them in case their hunger returned suddenly later on. He hailed a cab for them and rattled off his own address, explaining to her that Alexis was out for ice cream with friends, and his mother had booked herself into a spa for the weekend. She smiled at how exasperated he sounded when he explained that his mother's life was nothing but about relaxation now, and the person who truly needed a spa weekend was out with ice cream with friends instead, and most probably worrying about the AP exam she was having that week instead of having fun.

"I got a job, last week," she said after a lull in conversation, while picking at a torn seam of her jeans.

"Really? Congratulations." She loved how genuine he sounded, and she couldn't help the slight smile that crept on her face.

"Yeah, the station is just off the island." The thread came loose with a barely audible tear.

"Do you like your job, as n EMT? I don't think I've actually had a substantial conversation with an EMT who wasn't on duty," he said, and chuckled. She thought about the question for a while, turning over the possible ways to answer in her head. Rick had been good with the truth up until then, and he hadn't pried more than she was comfortable with, but she hadn't actually revealed enough of herself to warrant more questions.

"Sometimes." It was almost the truth, as close as she could get without raising too many questions. A person does not work as an EMT for 8 years and not like their job. Health care professionals were supposed to like their job, though that was at least the idea outsiders had. Most of her co-workers enjoyed what they did, had the want to care for people in them, but most of them were tired and worn from it. Being threatened by a junkie twice their own size because they won't give them morphine wasn't exactly a picnic.

He looked at her then, and she knew that she had been too honest, and that he had started to step into territory she did not want him in. There was a big risk that she had let him take a step inside, and that she would be unable to push him out. The only way would be to leave, and she had every intention of doing so whatever the test may say. Luckily he had no chance to say anything before the driver interrupted them by announcing the total fee for the fare as they had arrived at their destination.

The loft had a distinct floral scent as she stepped inside, just barely noticeable. She hadn't noticed that last time.

She clutched her bag tightly in her hand as he walked towards the study, leaving her behind just inside of the door.

"Come on, this is the only bathroom down here." He jerked his head towards his bedroom. Two weeks ago she had taken a shower back there, and it both felt like just yesterday and a lifetime ago. With her bag firmly clutched in her hand she made her way towards the study, and eyed the desk suspiciously. There were several reasons why she followed men home, and never invited them back to her own place, and one of them were that it meant that she didn't have to be confronted with objects and places which she associated with them. When she wanted to forget the last thing she needed was another memory.

He stopped outside of the bathroom door, shoving his hands down the pockets of the black slacks he was wearing.

"I'll wait out here… how long does the test take?" She unzipped her bag and pulled the box out of it, quickly scanning the back.

"About three minutes," she said.

Unlike the rest of the loft the floral scent wasn't just a hint in the bathroom, but overpowering enough to threaten a headache. Kate frowned at the overuse of the cleaner, but pulled out the test from the box nonetheless.

Peeing on a stick was easy enough, despite the awkward position. There was supposed to be a line in the control window, and one line in the test window, if a third line showed up and created a cross that meant it was positive. She put the cap on the test and put it back on the box, rising up to wash her hands and looked down on it again.

It was there. An unmistakable plus sign that grew stronger for each second. Her still wet hand flew up and covered her mouth as she stumbled back slightly. No, she thought. The move was supposed to have delayed her period, and she took the plan b. She had done everything as she was supposed to, and yet there it was. Looking over her shoulder towards the locked door the panic that had gripped at her heart was replaced with something different, something hollow which she had no worlds to explain.

She picked the test up with shaky hands and inspected it again. A wet hand rested against her abdomen and she could feel the chill of it through the thin shirt. The woman in the mirror looked back at Kate with two wide eyes and a trembling chin. She hadn't realized she was close to crying.

The smell, the lump in her throat, and her head spinning had her bent over the toilet, emptying the little contents of her stomach.

After rinsing her mouth she quickly stepped out of the bathroom to escape the smell and shutting the door behind her. On the bed sat Rick with an expectant look on his face waiting to find out if there was anything growing in her uterus. When she tried to open her mouth to speak the only thing that escaped was a sob, and once that dam had broken she could no longer hold it back.

He flew up from the bed and pulled her into a strong hug, holding her tightly against him. She wrapped her own arms around his waist and buried her face in the crook of his neck. It was hard to breathe, hard to stand, and it was hard to even think, and in that moment she was forever grateful that it was with Richard Castle that this had happened with. He smoothed her hair down her back and rested his cheek against the top of her head. He didn't say anything, he didn't try to console her.

The two of them stood like that, locked in a tight embrace as sobs wrecked her body after many years of holding them in. She knew she would crumble if she let the dam break, but at least someone was here to break the fall just a little bit.

When Kate had calmed down a little, and the sobs were no longer wrecking her body, and she was no longer howling from the pain of it all, he sat the two of them down on the bed, with her curled up in his lap and rubbing circles on her back.

"It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be," she said after a while, sniffling still but the tears had dried out.

"What wasn't easy?" he asked, his hands still rubbing her back in a continuous circle that warmed her to the core.

"I thought I'd know instantly that I'd want an abortion, because logically…" Logically she knew she was too broken to love a child, that whatever capability she had to care for one had been oblitirated in her the past 10 years. She had stopped caring for people because when she started to care she risked getting hurt. After her mother death, and her father's alcoholism, she wouldn't survive any more heartbreak.

"When my ex-wife got pregnant with Alexis I was 24 and she was 23, and while I was bringing in some money with my books we weren't really that well off at the time… I was so scared about the future, thought that there was no way that I could become a father, I was still a kid!" He glanced down at Kate who was now still in his lap waiting for him to continue the story. "But for some reason it felt right, like it was meant to be… it was hard, I'm not going to lie, and it saddens me every day to know that Alexis' mother isn't around so often, but I have never regretted the decision to have her, and to be her dad."

He reached down and put a finger under her chin, lifting it up so that she was looking at him. Her eyes were red, and her nose was red, and her face was still wet, but there were no more tears falling. His eyes locked on hers, blue eyes with that softness she was starting to associate with him.

"It's your decision, but I want you to know that when you came out of that bathroom I had the same feeling I had when I found out Meredith was pregnant with her… it's asking a lot to ask you to trust me because I'm just a stranger to you, but that's how I feel."

"I trust you," she said, biting her bottom lip. Against all better judgment she did, and that was scary.

"Good. I just want you to know where I stand, and that I think it would be kind of awesome to be a dad again, because Alexis is becoming an adult soon." The smile on his face was proud, not a trace of dishonesty was visible on his face. Before she chickened out she sat up and kissed him, not with the intention of starting anything else, just a gentle kiss, it was a type of kiss she hadn't given anyone in a long while. Warm lips pressed against each other in an expression of gratitude and need to feel the other. She could feel that spark, a hum inside of her ribcage that fluttered alive as it recognized his lips on hers.

When she had been a child she had seen her mother and father kiss that way as one of them was about to leave for work, reaching over the kitchen counter to say their goodbyes. Kate had squealed and professed her disgust at the affection her parents showed each other. Her mother and narrowed his eyes at her then, but her face remained mischievous.

 _"_ _Just wait, one day you'll be kissing someone too!"_

It had seemed silly then that she would kiss anyone. It looked quite disgusting to her small eyes. The kiss she gave Rick wasn't the type of kiss her mother gave her father, but it was something more than most people in her life had gotten from her. He didn't know that, and he certainly didn't know the mountains she climbed to tilt her head up towards him and give that kiss. When he looked back at her as she pulled away there was a glimmer in his eyes of something she couldn't quite place.

He was something different, she thought. Before he was a red book cover with a picture inside the jacket, and how he titled his head to look down on her, his eyes dancing over her face, and arms clasped around her waist. She was still sitting in his lap, and strangely that didn't feel awkward. It felt safe.

"Okay," she said, and nodded her head.

"Okay what?" She closed her eyes and giggled.

"Okay let's do this." He looked at her dumbfounded for a few seconds before he shook his head comically, and she couldn't help but giggle again.

"Do this?" He pointed at her stomach.

"Yes, that."

Maybe she was crazy for doing it, but when she thought about going through with an abortion something tugged at her heart, screaming at her that she wouldn't be less broken by it. People don't regret their children she had heard someone say once, and she knew that no matter what the man who was grinning at her would be there for the child, even if she herself failed. She had to take a chance to change, and this would be the first leap.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/n:_ Wow! There's now more people following this story that any story I've ever written. That's so cool, and wow! Seeing people follow what I write, review it, favorite it, go read my other stories and so on... it means so much to me, so thank you for taking the time to read what I share with you. Life is quite hectic at the moment so I don't have much time to write. Looking forward to my 3 week vacation in August really bad right now! Not too pleased with this chapter, but it's important to the story...

Hope you are all doing well :) I'm sorry I'm not replying to your reviews, my social anxiety gets to me and yeah... Trying to get better!

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 _And I heard from the trees a great parade  
And I heard from the hills a band was made  
And will I be invited to the sound?  
And will I be a part of what you've made?_

SUFJAN STEVENS – All the trees of the field will clap their hands

 **CHAPTER 5 - Confirmed**

The doctor had greying hair around his temples, and his voice was low and smooth. It reminded Kate of her grandfather. As he shuffled through the forms on his desk she frowned at the poster that hung opposite her depicting the stages of fetal development. She zeroed in on the one that supposedly showed how the one in her stomach looked, and Kate figured it looked more like it was plotting world domination rather than something precious.

"Okay Ms. Beckett, with those forms done I'm going to move onto the more physical part of the examination, so if you can lie back down and scoot a bit further down." She followed his instructions and found herself in a position she thought would be more aptly called squatting. This alone was a reason to avoid pregnancy, she thought. She knew it was paramount with routine gynecological examinations, yet the idea of willingly putting herself here wouldn't cross her mind. Ever.

Rick had wanted to come along, and it would have been good for him to fill out the medical history of his part of the family. It had been a month since the positive pregnancy test and the melt down she had had in his bedroom. Neither of them had spoken much about her reaction, but the looks he had been given her since then informed her that she had revealed far more than she had intended to. Still since then they hadn't spoken much at all. Not long after she had told him she would continue with the pregnancy, a decision she had gone back and forth on ever since, Alexis was due to return. In order to avoid a situation which they were not ready to deal with yet she had left the apartment.

It had taken her about ten steps down hallway before she regretted her decision to not have an abortion. Of course she would have one! She was a single 29 year old woman with an alcoholic father and a job she just started the week before, the father was a stranger who'd picked her up at a bar without as much as a conversation. Because she was 29 she was old enough to know better than this, she thought. Though she hadn't turned around and told him this, instead she took a three more steps and calmly told herself that fear was natural, and that this might turn out to be the best decision she had ever made.

She knew that the path she was on before wasn't working out, and now she had a chance to walk a different path; she would always lose one way.

That was what kept her from calling him, and she kept all of their phone calls short. There had only been a few times that they'd talked, since they were still strangers to each other it didn't feel completely natural to start acting like buddies. He called once to suggest she go see a doctor of his, and that he'd pay for it – it was apparently slightly out of range for what an EMT could pay, and she knew her insurance wouldn't cover it. Then she called to tell him the time of the appointment to which he informed her that he would be in Portland on his signing tour during the whole week. A part of her was disappointed, because she was tired of being alone so much, but the other part of her was glad because it would mean that she wouldn't blurt out something that she would regret.

The doctor continued the examination, and ended it with drawing blood. As she walked out of the room the doctor suggested that next time she'd bring Rick – he called him Rick, which settled uneasily in her stomach. Doctors and patients weren't supposed to be on first name basis, especially not when they would be looking up her vagina for the next 9 months. Kate had backed out of there, and hurried down the hall with a feeling that once she had entered the world of Richard Castle there was little way of escaping it.

Once she had left the building she glanced down at her clock and gauged that she had just enough time to make it to work, and buy something to eat along the way. As nausea had settled in the week before she had been waiting with a baited breath for it to grow worse, but it had stayed at a level where she could just notice it, and what suffered the most was her appetite. She bought herself a yoghurt to eat on the train, and pulled out the half eaten package of saltine crackers. Her appetite wasn't much worse than it had been before she was pregnant, and she knew she was already thin to begin with. That morning she had pulled on her jeans and they had been a bit too big around her waist. Maybe, she thought, she should buy like a Big Mac or something after work and eat just for eating. She was pregnant now, it wasn't just about her anymore. Even if she didn't feel hungry she still had to eat.

A part of her was worried how people at work would react to her being pregnant. She didn't actually think she was pregnant when she interviewed with them, and she certainly hadn't planned to stay pregnant long enough for it to matter. Now she would most likely need to go on maternity leave within 2-3 months. The doctor had expressed concerns about the heavy lifting on the job, and recommended early maternity leave. She glanced down on her phone where she had written up important information that she had been given. May 29th felt both like a lifetime away and much too soon, and by her birthday she would be about three months pregnant, and by then it would be alright to tell people. The only people she had to tell was her father and the people she worked with. After six weeks in the city she was still living with the college girls, and the only social contact had been with Rick.

Rick was due back in New York in time for the weekend in two days. He had explained to her that since it was nearly Halloween he had to start preparing everything, and he had even asked her if she had a costume. The last time she had dressed up for Halloween was in 1998, and that was eleven years ago, and it was one of the holidays she felt that she had missed to celebrate the least. The past years she had always tried to get a shift during Halloween, since she would rather work than be subjected to the forced socialization with people she did not know at her doorstep, or be labeled grumpy by her neighbors. No one could dislike her for taking care of those who got hurt on a night like that.

This Halloween she would not be working, despite requesting to. She was working too many weekends in October already. It wasn't something she had thought of when she requested her schedule, what had been on her mind was making it more difficult for her and Rick to meet, but it had slipped her mind that he was an author who made his own schedule, and spent his weekends with his daughter, and thus making him too busy to meet up anyway.

When she had informed him that she couldn't come over Saturday to help with decoration due to her working, he had somehow managed to persuade her to come over in the evening. They were planning to tell Alexis sometime soon, and Rick felt that it was best to tell her now just after the pregnancy had been officially confirmed by a doctor. He wanted her to be there with him, since now that she was pregnant with his child he would be a part of Alexis' family.

His family was already bigger than hers had ever been. Her mother's parents had died in a car accident two years before her birth, and her father's mother had died in cancer when he was a teenager, so what was left was her parents and one grandfather who died when Kate was fourteen. There had been no sisters or brothers after a complication at birth, and her mother had also been an only child. She had vague relationships with her cousins on her dad's side, but they lived in Ohio, and the oldest of the cousins were 9 years younger than her. This meant that stepping into a family that already appeared to be complete was much like being a third wheel on a date.

It made her want to avoid Rick even more, and wonder if she truly was making the right decision.

By the time she had gotten to work and changed into her uniform, and clipped on her "Kathrine" nametag to the pocket, and her ID-card to her hip, she was once again a nervous wreck. She pulled the phone out of her locker and typed off a quick text to him.

 _"Doctor says all is fine, due date is may 29 / Kate_ "´

At the station in San Jose the year before one of her co-workers got pregnant after years of trying. She was nearly forty and had no children, and after years of trying to get pregnant naturally, and then several rounds of IVF she finally got a positive pregnancy test. She had been so happy about it that the minute the stick turn positive she told everyone about it, because they hadn't even gotten that far yet. During the 9th week of pregnancy she had a miscarriage. It made Kate feel guilty, as if she was taking something away from her former co-worker by being able to get pregnant as easily, and without even wanting to. It did work out for her, though, somehow she got pregnant naturally a few weeks later, and when Kate left for New York she was going on maternity leave.

It didn't make sense to Kate how some people wanted something so badly and had to fight so long and so hard for it, while for other people it fell in their lap. It didn't mean that she had to go through with it, but the guilt was there nonetheless.

Her shift was much like most of her shifts. They brought in an elderly woman who had fallen down in the kitchen, a man who had been stabbed in the back, and had spent nearly half an hour trying to convince a man with a nearly black foot that he needed to be taken to the hospital to have his foot checked out. As they dropped off the last patient of the day, a mother and her five year old son with a head wound she was reminded why she had stayed in this job: the look of gratitude and relief on the mother's face as they took her concerns seriously, and took her son safely to the hospital. That was why she did what she did, because people needed help.

By the end of her shift it was 10pm, and in the changing rooms she greeted the women who were going on shift, and smiled at the women who had ended their shift just as she had. They shared the tight space with casual chatter about inconsequential things, sometimes offering an anecdotal story of an unusual pick-up they had during the day, and sharing war stories of the life as an EMT. Listening to the conversation with one ear she picked up her phone and glanced at it.

 _"Of course it is! What time are you coming by on satday?"_

The women were discussing a hole in the wall restaurant that supposedly had the best burger in the city, which was a topic she wasn't that interested in in her current condition, so she tuned them out the best she could as she texted him back.

 _"Probably around five, is that ok?"_

Kate thought about joining in on the conversation, but she couldn't think of a single thing to say. Nothing she had to offer would be giving to the discussion, and she didn't think they would find any of it interesting anyway. The city was different than she remembered it being, it had adapted in ways she hadn't anticipated it would in the past eight years. Of course she had left before 9/11, and it was obvious that things would not stay the same, yet when she walked past the places where she used to hang out as a teenager it all looked the same but still different. The place where she would eat hamburgers with her friend Maddison had been turned into a sandwich shop, and the place where they used to shop clothes had seemed to have shrunk to half its original size. It was uneasy, and left her doubtful of being able to find herself again here.

Back in California there had been a sense of hope in that changing scenery Kate would be able to evoke something inside of her which was missing, and that returning to familiarity would in some way bring back who she was. Because whoever she was now wasn't the person she used to be. Kate Beckett was the child who faced down the darkness instead of having a night light, no matter how scared she was. Kate Beckett used to be the person who faced all of her fears head on, and didn't run away, but the Kate Beckett she was, and the one she is had one major discernable difference; the one she was now had a mother who was murdered by a robber, and an alcoholic father. The old Kate Beckett had two parents.

Things change a person.

Not wanting to stick around and keep being reminded of the distance between her and them, her and the rest of the world, she quickly changed into her own clothes and left. She shouted goodnight over her shoulder, and threw up her collar to protect herself against the brisk air that would hit her once she stepped outside.

Tomorrow she had the day off, and maybe she should go see her father, but ever since he threw her out of his apartment a month ago she had been avoiding the place. There was so much to be said between them, but she couldn't bear the sight of him drunk, couldn't bear knowing what he had been and seeing what he is now. The two of them were the same in a way, slightly different but neither of them coping. She remembered when he picked up the bottle the first time, and then she hadn't been alarmed. It was one or two too many beers, and then it was whiskey at odd times of the day, and then it became vodka in a coffee cup, and bottles hidden in the cupboards. Every time she flew back from Stanford to see him he had gotten progressively worse, and by the time she moved back he was lost in the drink.

It embarrassed her, not that he was an alcoholic, but that she was so eager to leave. Barely four months back, barely two months at NYU, and she packed two bags with what she could fit and took the first flight out while her father was passed out. All that she left was a note on the fridge telling him where she had gone, and the phone number he could reach her on. The first week he didn't call at all, but then he called at all hours of the day. In the beginning she would pick up every time, talk him down from his worries, anger, or grief, and then come up with an excuse to hang up. After a while the excuses came before she even answered. For a long while she didn't answer at all.

There was a lot that she could have done, and she chose the path where she didn't do anything. She abandoned the both of them, like he had abandoned her.

 _"5pm sounds great! How's New York?"_

She glanced at the phone and down the street her building was on. She was standing just outside the door debating if she should stop by the diner across the street and buy that hamburger she should probably eat – healthier things to eat weren't as easy to come by at nearly 11pm - or if she should just call it a night. The queasiness she felt let her know that even if she bought the hamburger it wouldn't mean thay she'd eat it, and took the staircase instead.

 _"Rainy and dark, how's Portland?"_

The reply came fast.

 _"It's rainy and dark here too, can you talk?"_

She unlocked the door, and to her surprise there was no one sitting on the couch. It was Wednesday but the apartment appeared empty. Before replying she looked over the apartment once more and confirmed that she was the only one there.

 _"Yes, just give me five minutes"_

With pregnancy came an uncomfortable small bladder. It didn't matter how much or little she drank, she still had to run to the bathroom regularly. She suspected that soon her coworkers would either find out that she was pregnant, or think she had a UTI. The apartment only had one bathroom which was more the reason why she needed to find a new place to live. She had been to see a couple of apartments, but they had either been too run down or too expensive, and too far from the city. The goal was to have her own apartment to rent before the baby came, but until then she had to live somewhere that wasn't with 20 year olds who stayed up until 3am to either watch TV-shows, party, or do all-nighters for exams. She wouldn't be able to cope much longer with waking up in the middle of the night from one of them punching way too hard on their keyboard.

Her phone started ringing as she was washing her hands.

"Hello?" she said, holding the phone in the crook of her neck whilst drying her hands on a towel.

"Hi." It was ridiculous: she could hear the smile that was on Rick's face in his voice.

"It's rainy in Portland too, huh?" She tried to sound casual, but her voice was hitched and too stiff.

"Yeah, I love fall," he said. She imagined him sitting by a window and staring out with a dreamy expression on his face.

"You do?" She had never been enthused by the supposedly beautiful coloring on the trees, nor of the dreary winters. The trees rarely stayed red and yellow for more than a day, and it was not worth the months of bad weather.

"You don't?" He asked as if the question she had asked was absurd. She shook her head but couldn't help the smile that crept on her face.

"No, no I don't." She looked through her drawer to find something to wear and discovered one of the t-shirts she had brought over from her dad's place just as she had gotten there. It was a white t-shirt with her high school emblem on it. She threw it on the bed to put it on later, and did the same with a pair of sweatpants.

"I'm learning more things about you every day…" He trailed off and was silent for a while. "I wanted to call because I want to tell Alexis this weekend, and it would probably be on the best if we're on the same page about it."

"Yeah, that would probably be for the best." There was fray thread on the t-shirt she had thrown on the bed next to where she now sat, and she started to pull on it.

"Alexis is mature for her age, most of the time more mature than I am, but she's still fifteen, so I just want you to be aware that she might not react well initially, but I don't want you to be upset about that." He paused again, and she tried to imagine him in Portland. He was most likely in a hotel room, and she wished she dared to ask him to tell her how it looked there. "I think it'll be best if I do most of the talking, but she might have questions that only you can answer, and I want you to be honest, because the moment I start lying to my kid she will start lying too. She deserves the truth."

"Okay, I can go along with that." It didn't seem that hard, they were simple terms. She had been honest with Rick until now, but that was mostly because there had never been a scenario where she would lie, so she was sure it wouldn't be that much different with his kid.

"I also want you to be honest with me Kate," he continued, taking her off guard. "We're in this together you and I, so I'm wondering if you're having any doubts."

"Honestly?" She paused. This was where she could lie, tell him that everything was fine instead of opening Pandora's box she could walk away. "Every day, probably every hour."

"Do you still want to do this?"

"Yes," she said without hesitation. "I just… there's one thing you need to know about me Rick…" She paused, unsure if she wanted to step over this line, but also well aware that this was a line she had to cross soon anyway.

"Whatever you need Kate," he said, voice kind and reassuring.

"I'm a one person package, I don't come with anyone else, so I'm not used to there being people there, and it will take time." She ran a hand through her hair and waited for his reply, gnawing on her lip. Heavy emotional baggage tended to have people fleeing.

 _"_ _I'm not the right guy for you."_

Spoken by the second guy she dated after her mother's death, it had only been two weeks and when she told him he ran.

"Kate I meant what I've said, we're in this together." The silence that followed was too much, too heavy, and Kate didn't know if she wanted to cry of sadness or out of joy.

"I have to go Rick," she said. She was exhausted and wanted to sleep, but she also wanted to be alone again. "See you on Saturday."

"See you Saturday," he said.

She hung up before anything else could be said.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/n:** This is how long I could wait to share this chapter with you guys! This story is something I've really enjoyed, and still enjoy, writing, and I love sharing what I've written with you. I'm by no means a "popular writer", but I love to write and share it, and that's really what should matter. There have been a lot of negativity in the fandom, and there's been people who've left very negative reviews which have gone unappreciated (and understandedly so) by the authors. So far I have been lucky to have none of those for this story. My hope is that the readers of my stories will understand that I try to write characters who are flawed, and not completely good or bad, but have a humanity which sometimes makes them do bad things. While I completely welcome constructive criticism, I do not accept bashing of the characters, or any type of hate. The moment I get a review like that is the moment I turn off anon reviews.

I'm updating a little early, but I'm nearly done with chapter 10. This story has a long way to go, and I hope you want to follow it with me! :)

* * *

 _It's easier to lie and be safe  
Time and time again I'm half stalled  
One giant leap of faith is easy  
When everyone you ask is so sure_

SNOW PATROL – Grazed Knees

 **CHAPTER 6 - Official**

The ride up to his apartment was different without him. In the lobby the man behind the desk asked for her name, and checked her against a list of approved visitors before they let her inside. Seven weeks earlier she had stood in this elevator with him and thought that in the morning she would ride it down and never return.

Huffing in frustration she turned around and looked herself in the mirror. She had dark circles under her eyes despite trying to cover them up with concealer. The mascara she had put on before leaving her apartment had already started to smudge underneath her eyes. She had had only a couple of minutes back home to change, and halfway there she had regretted the grey knit sweater she had chosen to wear. It was a nice long sweater that was in fashion at the moment. Coupled with her dark wash jeans she looked unsexy and unassuming, just as she had planned. But she also looked like it was swallowing her whole.

She had just knocked on the door before Rick pulled it open, a slight look of panic in his wide eyes. Perplexed she looked behind him and saw that not only was Alexis there, so was an older woman with red hair that matched his daughter's. Kate suspected that the woman was Martha, Rick's mother. The mother whom he hadn't intended on telling about their situation yet. Not until after they had talked with Alexis and given her time to adjust. Their plans on how to tell Alexis seemed to vanish into thin air.

They had planned to make, and eat, dinner together, and then before desert they would sit down with Alexis on the couch. Rick would tell her, and she would help answer questions. Alexis was, according to Rick, tactful and would not demand answers until they were ready to talk. Martha seemed to have a completely different approach.

"Rick, who's this?" The woman glided up to Rick's side and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder as she peered over at Kate.

"Mother, this is Kathrine Beckett," Rick said in his smooth tone. A fleeting thought entered Kate's mind that she liked hearing her full name on his lips. It sounded soft when he said it; inviting rather than off-putting.

"Nice to meet Kathrine, come in come in!" She ushered both Kate and Rick into the apartment as Alexis watched them with apprehension from the couch.. This convinced Kate that the girl had already figured out what was going on.

"Kate, you've met my daughter Alexis," Rick said, gesturing towards the girl on the couch. "Alexis this is Kate."

"Yes, briefly…" Kate blushed at the memory of Alexis barging in the morning after. She had been wearing far less clothing then than she was at the moment. The girl rose from the couch as Kate stretched out her hand, and grasped it in hers.

"Nice to meet you for real this time," Kate said, trying to not make the smile look too forced.

"Yeah, you too," Alexis said, but didn't seem too convinced, and eyed her father as if trying to read his face, and try to see what was going on.

"Well uh, this isn't going exactly the way we planned, but maybe we should all sit down? Kate?" He looked over at her to get her approval, his hands clasped tight in front of him. She nodded as a reply, maybe too eager and for too long, and then followed suit as he sat down, fighting the urge to bite her lip.

"What's going on dad?" The girl looked between Rick and Kate who were sitting on the two easy chairs next to each other.

"Yes Richard, what's going on?" The older woman looked more concerned than confused, appearing to be expecting the worst. There was also an understanding across her face that told Kate that she had already guessed what they were going to say.

"Well, to start off with I want to say that this wasn't something we had planned. It sort of just… happened, but we're trying to make the best of it. Alexis… I hope that you are willing, and wanting, to be in on that too, because you are my world."

"Dad…" Alexis complained, shifting under Rick's intense gaze as his eyes watered.

"Okay, okay," Rick said, and laughed, his nerves making the laugh sound more like wheezing. "What I wanted to tell you is that you're going to be a big sister, Kate's pregnant."

There was a thick silence that fell over the room as Rick's words sunk in. It was as if the full meaning of it finally hit Rick and Kate hit them in the gut. Kate clasped her hands in her lap to hide how bad they were trembling. It, the pregnancy, wasn't just an idea anymore, and now that people knew it would become real. She was pregnant. Her stomach would grow bigger, and come summer she would be taking care of an infant. Oh shit, she thought, and scanned the two women's faces for any reaction at all.

"How long?" Alexis asked after a long moment's pause.

"I'm 9 weeks today," Kate said, surprising herself at how rasp her voice was.

"No I mean how long have you been together," the girl clarified, and was now perched at the edge of her seat. Kate and Rick glanced at each other and drew a collective deep breath before looking back at the girl again.

"We're not together Alexis," Rick said, a sadness was in his voice, one Kate couldn't quite place.

"So you're an EMT?" Alexis asked Kate, who nodded in reply. "And dad you've been through this before…" Alexis massaged her temples as if a headache had struck her. "How could you be this irresponsible? What about STDs? Dad what if Kate was some lunatic stalker, or Kate what if my dad was a psycho? Am I the only one seeing this?" She looked at Kate with an incredulous expression.

"Alexis sometimes things happen no matter how well you try to protect yourself. Nothing is 100% guaranteed to prevent this kind of thing from happening." Despite Rick's explanation Alexis didn't seem convinced.

"And who are you Kate? How am I supposed to trust my little brother or sister with someone who thinks it's a good idea to follow a stranger home and sleep with him? And dad I've known for a long time about you doing this, but that doesn't make it okay." Kate saw the fire behind Alexis' eyes. She had thought she was ready for the anger and the attack, but they stung like knives twisted into her chest. Tears pricked behind Kate's eyes, and she hoped that she would be able to hold them in until she was a safe distance away from here.

"Alexis," Martha said this time, reaching out a hand to her granddaughter's wrist. "I know that you are angry, but Kathrine and your dad are adults, and even adults make mistakes, and have accidents."

"I know gran, I'm just…" Alexis searched for words.

"Disappointed?" Kate offered, and shrunk further into her chair as Alexis turned to look straight at her.

"Yeah, I'm disappointed." The girl nodded her head to emphasize her agreement with the sentence.

"I'm disappointed too," Kate said, and Alexis' eyebrows furrowed again. "This isn't how I wanted things to go, but I have to make the best of it." Kate looked over to Rick who was sitting in silence just a few feet from her, looking down into her lap with a contemplative look on his face. "I've learnt though that it's a part of life. When positive things happen, and when you meet people like your dad… you have to seize it, no matter the timing." Rick's eyes shifted up to hers, and behind them she saw a flicker of warmth which spread into her own body. She hadn't realized that she had been cold before then.

"Alexis, this isn't going to be easy for anyone of us, but I hope that you can accept Kate as a part of our family." He reached across and took one of her hands out of her lap, and grasped it tight in his.

"Do your parents know?" Alexis asked, and Kate withdrew from Rick, clasping her hands in her lap again, turning her knuckles white.

"No my parents… my dad doesn't know," she said, correcting herself. She promised to be truthful, and she was going to be.

"Does your mom know?" Alexis asked.

"No, my mom is dead." How long had it been since she said that sentence? Years. She had said variations of it, avoided the subject, she had lied. The sentence was like scratching a wound open again. She couldn't help it as she pulled her legs up under herself, and crossing one arm across her body, holding herself tight. As if she would explode if she let go.

"I'm sorry," Alexis said, something changed in the way she looked at Kate, a softness which replaced some of the weariness.

"It's uh… it was a while ago." It wasn't okay, it wasn't fine. It was horrible, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, and every day she pictured her mother in that alley bleeding to death. She hadn't seen the photos. Instead her mind conjured up horrific images which had her gasping for air, or bolting out of bed from nightmares. "Where's your mom?" Rick had never mentioned Alexis' mother, and she didn't appear to be anywhere close by. For Alexis' sake she hoped her mother wasn't dead, no one deserved that.

"She's in L.A," Alexis said, a half smile on her face that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Meredith is an actress. I have full custody," Rick said, eyes on Alexis. The way they seemed to care for each other was unusual, a bond that Kate didn't remember having with her own parents. She had loved her parents, and their relationship was much better than most of her peers', but it was far from this. The trust and love that exuded from this conversation was unusual, one of a kind.

"Oh," was all Kate got out. She looked at the girl on the couch with a heart shaped face and for the first time saw a strength in her that no child should have to carry in them. That would never be her child, their child. She would survive for her child, she would live for her child. She had seven months until summer. That was seven months to start changing, and to become the person her child would need her to be; a whole one.

After a while they moved to the kitchen and started to prepare dinner. They delegated Kate the duty of making the sauces, while Alexis shopped the vegetables. Rick fried the meat and the mushrooms they were eating with it, while Martha looked on with a glass of red wine that she topped off often. She watched Martha with weariness each time the woman filled up her glass. She tried to see from Rick and Alexis' reaction whether this was something to worry about or not, but neither of them seemed to react to it. Maybe she was too sensitive, maybe this was normal. Either way she avoided Martha the best she could. It wasn't easy, though, since the woman was over the moon about the prospect of being a grandmother again. At one point she had said that it was a shame that there hadn't been more Rodgers children. According to her they were doing a favor to the world by keeping the Rodgers' gene going. It was like that she found out that Richard Edgar Castle was born as Richard Alexander Rodgers.

"Children are marvelous," Martha said, finishing a long tirade of the benefits of a Rodgers' child. It included stunning good looks, boundless creative talent. With a glance towards Alexis Martha said that at least intelligence was somewhere in there.

"You say that as if you enjoyed being a mother," Rick said, tongue in cheek, to which he received a glare.

"I was a single working mother, I didn't have…" Martha flapped an arm out towards the living room "all this."

"Mother is an actress, Broadway, and let's just say I had an interesting collection of nannies growing up." The look Rick gave her was scolding, but humor wasn't far underneath. Kate had a feeling that this type of interaction was how they communicated, through loving jabs.

"You had nannies?" Alexis asked looking up from the chopping board where she was cutting carrots into tiny pieces.

"Well, I had old ladies who watched soap operas instead of watching me." Martha rolled her eyes at him, and picked up her wine glass and exited the kitchen.

"Don't be so dramatic Richard," she said, and settled into the couch.

"How come I didn't have a nanny?" Alexis asked, which reminded Kate of how young and innocent this girl was with her wide eyes and plump lips. Would her child bear any resemblance to his or her sister, or did Alexis favor her mother more? Lost for a brief moment in the day dream of what her baby would look like, she almost missed Rick's answer to the question.

Kate hoped she wouldn't be the one to break this family, that she would be the one to tarnish the innocence in Alexis, and in her own child.

"Because your mom and I decided that if anyone was going to screw you up it was going to be me." Rick flipped the meat over in the pan. The hiss of it broke off the brief silence that followed as Alexis looked at her father with a contemplative expression. Then Alexis turned towards Kate.

"Don't let him brainstorm murder scenes with my brother or sister." Her voice was deadpan, but there was something twinkling in her eyes.

"Do you only write about murder?" Kate asked. She had finished with the two sauces, and was now seated on a barstool opposite them.

"You haven't read my dad's books?" Alexis asked, and Kate shook her head. "So you're not a groupie?"

"No, I'm not a groupie," Kate said, fighting the smile that started to creep on her face at the thought of it. How would one be a groupie for a novelist? It wasn't as straightforward as it would be for a band.

"I think I like you better now," the girl said, and dumped the salad she had chopped into a large bowl.

"Don't insult my fans," Rick said, wagging a finger at Alexis.

They ate the food in silence as the awkwardness beganto settle in. They invited her for dinner because she had had sex with Rick and then gotten pregnant. It wasn't because there was any meaningful relationship between herself and Rick. It became absurd as they sat there, how superficial and serendipidous their relationship was. Everyone at the table knew, and how many more would know later on?

She wasn't ashamed of what she had done. She was an adult, and he was an adult, and they had both wanted it. There was still a stigma about it, one she couldn't shake from herself. What they had done were in some eyes wrong, and it would forever be something people would scrutinize her for. Alexis was the first who would question their sanity, but wouldn't be the last to think they were stupid.

"My divorce to Gina was public," he said after Martha and Alexis had retired. The two of them were sitting in Rick's study with a cup of coffee each. Kate was only smutting at it, holding it in two hands for the warmth. Despite the comfortable temperature of the apartment, something inside her that still felt cold. "There's a big risk that your pregnancy will make the news."

"How long were you married?" she asked. She knew that he had two ex-wifes. One wasAlexis' mother, and the other washis publisher – ill-advised in Kate's opinion. Nut she wasn't about to judge him given her own history. The publicity of her pregnancy was something she didn't want to think of at the moment. Sje would rather push up that conversation until it was impossible to ignore any further.

"Six years." There was a smile on his face, and it confused her. "It was a good marriage in the beginning. Then the differences became too many, and after a while neither of us saw a point in staying married. We would've only learn to hate each other. The divorce was amicable, and finalized just seven months ago."

"That's recent… how did Alexis take it?" It was close to half the girl's life that Gina had been in it as Rick's wife, but this was only the second time she had heard her name mentioned. Rick had never mentioned Alexis seeing Gina at any point in the past weeks.

"I don't know." He sat back in the arm chair, arms crossed behind his head. "I think she was expecting it, it wasn't something that came out of the blue."

"Why didn't you have any kids with Gina?" Six years of marriage was definitely enough time for a couple to have a child or two.

"Gina didn't want any children, and I didn't want any more," he said. Her eyes flickered down, glancing at the hands she had folded in her lap. She still sat perched on the edge of her seat as if she was ready to leave at any second. "I didn't think I wanted any more, but then you said that the condom had broken, and I think it was just that I didn't want any with Gina."

"You don't think that… Alexis is almost an adult, are you sure you want to start over again?" She knew he was 40 now, and he knew that she was less than a month from her 30th birthday. She was the age a lot of women were when they had their first child, but his child-rearing days were almost over.

"Being a dad is the best thing I have ever done. Alexis' accomplishments and happiness is what makes my world spin, and every time she smiles I am so proud of her. Nothing will ever measure up to that." She watched him with rapt attention as he spoke. She saw his eyes shine with pride, and his mouth twitch up in a smile – he loved his daughter unconditionally. He was in awe with his daughter. Rick was a good man, and she doubted there was a malicious bone in his body.

She hoped that she wouldn't break him. Oh god, she thought a desperate plea, he didn't deserve the pain she would ultimately cause. Looking back at her life she saw only destruction. There was a flash of faces in front of her eyes; faces crumbled in sadness, faces crumbled in anger, confusion, and sorrow. She remembered Finn, the boy she dated after her mom's murder. He was the boy with dark brown hair and grey eyes, who when she met him had his shoulders squared and smirk on his face. By the time they were over she left him he was lying curled up on the floor in tears. sShe still could not comprehend the power she had had to break him. He had stood in front of her with those grey eyes piercing into hers, and what he had said still had the power to cut her right through to the core.

"Your mother is gone, but I'm here okay, I'm here and I'll help you through it, but you have to stop Kate, you have to stop!"

She hadn't stopped. Instead she had yelled at him to get out of her life, and to never come back again. The anger had vibrated through her body, seized her and tilted her world completely. After she had ran out of his dorm room, and the foolish boy had followed. He was an athlete so he had caught up with her on the lawn outside. Years later she had no idea what she had said, she had been furious with him and with everything, and had just wanted to be alone. The weekend before she had visited her father and he had spent the weekend in a drunk stupor. The times he was sober he had looked at her with a harrowing sorrow in his eyes so palpable that she couldn't breathe. Finn had collapsed, and he had curled up right there on the lawn as she ran away again.

The next morning she had applied for a transfer to NYU, and spent the rest of the semester doing everything in her power to avoid Finn. It was easy because the two times she had come across him after that he had looked at her with a fire in his eyes that made her back away.

It was better not to get involved with people, because she messed them up. Now Rick was here, and she had his baby in her, and had somehow gotten herself into a lifetime commitment. She hoped that Rick was strong, and she hoped that he wouldn't get too involved with her. The heartbreak she came trailing with was bound to explode all over him.

"You seem like a great dad, Rick," she said. His eyes glimmered when he looked at her.

"You think so?" She nodded her head in reply. "I try."

"That's half the battle won, you know… trying." She hoped that she would know how to try, and that she would figure out some kind of solution for all everything before this baby was born. "Thank you."

"What for?" His eyes twinkled with confusion now. It was strange how expressive his eyes were. He didn't wear his heart on his sleeve, his heart shone in his eyes.

"Being here, being kind, and not leaving me alone with this… and for giving me options." If he hadn't been there and wanted this she would have had an abortion. It would have been the right choice if she was alone, but she would have forever wondered what life would have been like if she had the baby.

"That's nothing to thank me for," he said.

"It is, Rick, it is something to thank you for." No one had been this kind with her in forever, and no one had looked at her and let her opinion matter in such a long time.

"Kate…" The glimmer in his eyes had disappeared, and now he looked at her with a serious expression, holding her eyes with his. "Whatever has happened before this I want you to know that what I have done is nothing extraordinary, and you need to get used to it."

"Okay, but I will continue to say thanks." He smiled at her, a just visible smile, but it was still a smile.

"I can live with that."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N:** What to do when life gets you down? You write. Which is why this is updated much quicker this time around. With this chapter we're starting to scratch the surface of Rick and Kate's strange new relationship. The following chapters will focus more and more on this, with some other things thrown in. Stick around for chapters 9 and 10... I won't say what happens but I'm excited to share them with you.

* * *

 _It's you, now and always you but never me_  
 _I've never dared to let my feelings free_  
 _Why's it always you and never me?_  
 _I've never cared too much about honesty_

 **THE PERISHERS – Trouble Sleeping**

 **CHAPTER 7 - Move**

The boxes with books were heavy. That was the reason Rick gave for taking on the duty of unpacking them into the shelves. She didn't have a system for them, so she didn't mind him putting them in for that reason. The reason she disliked it was because it felt ridiculous. She was perfectly capable of carrying the boxes from where the moving company had put them. She had after all put up the shelf on her own.

Kate figured it was a macho thing. When she had asked him to help moving and he had expected to be carrying furniture up a staircase. He had not expected that everything was already in the apartment.. The people from the company had been poor at taking directions, and she had been too exhausted to put up a fight.

She got this apartment almost out of the blue. Kate had been looking at a sublet outside the city when she had ran into an old co-worker of her mother's. The woman knew what had happened, and kept looking at Kate with sympathy pouring out of her eyes. The woman contacts, and was able to get her a decent apartment. It wasn't too far from the city, and was in a good neighborhood. No subletting needed. At first Kate was a bit reluctant to talk to her. The last time she had seen the woman had been over a year before her mother's death. The woman had been present at one of her mother's scolding of Kate's reckless behavior. That was over 12 years ago but it still left Kate's cheeks burn hot.

The woman looked older, too. The years had ager her like the years should have aged her mother. Kate hadn't wanted to linger in that too long. That her mother hadn't just missed out on life, but also aging. Unlike most people her mother had wanted to age. There was dignity in aging, she would say. Lines on your face symbolized a rich life. Before she had died she had crow's feet in the corner of her eyes. Those were lines her mother was the most proud of. Laughter lines, she would say.

It surprised Kate that she didn't collapse in tears after speaking to the woman. She had slumped against a wall in sheer exhaustion from the conversation. It had taken a full five minutes before she was able to keep walking.

The woman - whose name she was too embarrassed to admit she didn't remember - was true to her word. Less than a week later Kate received information of an apartment would be available in the first week of December. This was the reason why Rick had come along with a box of Christmas ornaments after she had told him she didn't have any.

"I really can do that, and I really don't need Christmas things," she said, pulling out a glittery red tinsel which was surprisingly long out of the box, inspecting the colorful content that was left in it.

"Everyone needs Christmas things… well everyone who doesn't celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanza or…" She glared at him. " _You_ need Christmas things," he said. "Because you are carrying my child, and my children know Christmas in excess." He folded up the box he was done unpacking, and put it against the wall with the other box he had already gotten through before.

"I haven't celebrated in years…" she mumbled, putting the tinsel back in the box, and pushed her hands down the pockets of her jeans. The jeans were getting a bit tight, but she could still button them without too much difficulty. She knew that it wouldn't be long before she needed to invest in a pair of maternity pants. She was only about 15 weeks, yet it seemed as if she would not escape pregnancy with a small stomach, despite her height.

"More the reason to start, next year it will be incredible, but in about five years it will be the best," he said, and picked up another box with books, this one much heavier than the last making him huff at the weight of it. It was strange how many books she had despite not reading much at all. The last book she had read was two years ago. It struck her now that she saw the books being put up again how much she missed that. "When Alexis started appreciating Christmas that was when Christmas got magical for me, the look on her face when all the decorations were up, oh and she loved to make Christmas cards to everyone! I really miss that."

"Let's hope this kid isn't like me then…" Kate said, picking up a lighter box with utensils in it, and carrying it towards the kitchen.

"What do you mean?" His voice was high pitched. When she looked back she could see him looking after her with his hair sticking up and eyebrows shot high up in her forehead.

"When I was a kid I couldn't sit still long enough to finish a drawing, let alone Christmas cards to multiple people," Kate said with a smile.

"I didn't learn how to read until I was seven because I didn't want to sit still, I'm surprised I managed to become a writer." Kate laughed, putting the box she was carrying down on the kitchen table so that she would not drop it.

"Rick I think that whoever this child is it won't be another Alexis." She kept laughing all the way to the kitchen while Rick stared after her with a dumbfounded expression on his face.

Rick had finished with the books, put the couch and coffee table in the right spot. He started helping Kate with screwing together her bedframe when it became lunch time. Neither of them knew of a place that delivered nearby, and Kate had no groceries whatsoever in her fridge. Deciding to venture down the block they found a pizza place that looked promising enough, and sat at one of the two tables by the window.

"This isn't exactly like that café we went to," she said while looking over the laminated menu. They had already ordered by the disk, and she could see them putting their pizzas in the oven out of the corner of her eye.

"No, I think you're more likely to get a heart attack from this." She smiled at him and put the menu down.

"Thank you for helping me Rick." When he had called her on her birthday three weeks ago to say happy birthday she had told him that she told him about the apartment offer which would cut her commute to work by half. Of course he had immediately jumped at the opportunity to help her. He offered to drive her things from the room she was renting to her apartment, but she informed him that she had her own car. It was a 10 year old green Citroen Saxo that looked like patch work. But it was her car and she was proud of it. That it didn't have much space to brag with wasn't an issue. She had driven her things up to New York in it, and there had been no problems with space.

When she had stopped her car earlier that day in front of the apartment complex she would now be living in Rick had peered down into the passenger seat. He looked like he expected the engine to explode at a standstill.

"No problem, none at all," he said and leaned over the table to look at the menu she was holding. "Do you find anything you like?"

"I'm craving fries," Kate said and put the menu down. "At least I can be thankful that my cravings are normal foods. There is this woman I work with who is a month ahead of me and she's craving chalk."

"Like she wants to eat it?" She couldn't help but laugh at his horrified expression.

"Yeah, it's called pica, not that uncommon actually." On the street outside she saw a couple pushing a stroller. Inside of it sat a toddler that babbled excitedly about something. A normal couple, Kate concluded. There had always been an abundance of normal couples in the city. Lately they all seemed to converge around her.

"I hope you don't get it." He curled his lips in disgust, shuddering.

"Me too." The silence settled over them, as she watched the couple turn a corner down the street. "Hey, you remember the appointment on the 22nd?"

"Remember?" he asked incredulously, picking up a calendar out of his pocket and flipping it open on the date. He had circled it with five different colors and written in bold letters _ultrasound._ "It will be the best Christmas present ever!"

"Do you want to know the sex?" she asked.

"Yeah!" he almost yelled, and then looked at her confused expression. She didn't quite get exactly why he was this excited about it. "Yeah… Yeah, I do, don't you?" It was his turn to look confused.

"If you want to know, we'll find out," she said and smiled at him. To be honest she had yet to completely realize that it was an actual baby growing in her stomach. And that it was hers. That it was Rick's she had realized, but it was hard to comprehend that she was becoming a mother. The thought was abstract and absurd to her.

"Wow," he said, smiling wide. A waiter placed the pizzas in front of them and both of them looked up and smiled their thanks. "I can't believe we're already finding out."

"It's going fast," she said, humming in agreement.

Rick stayed for another couple of hours after lunch. Two hours before dinner time she sent him home to Alexis because she had plans with her father. The pregnancy had gone by fast until now, and she still hadn't told her father that she was pregnant. It wasn't intentional. She had been apprehensive to contact him after the last time they had spoken. They two of them hadn't parted in the best of ways then. Years apart and then that was hard for her to get past. She had spent years too far away to visit him. Now it was strange for her to be able to take the subway and see her dad.

Kate showered the grime and sweat off before putting on a loose fitting top and a pair of jeans. They were a bit larger than her usual size, but necessary to be comfortable. It wasn't obvious that she was pregnant yet but she was bloated. She didn't want to admit it to herself, but within a few weeks she would have a noticeable belly in most types of clothes.

For a short moment she considered taking her car to his place. But then she glanced at the clock and knew that rush hour would clog up the traffic into the city. Taking the subway in would mean that she would be in much better luck of getting there at a decent hour. Cursing herself for just getting dressed, she rushed out of the door. Tardiness and her anxious alcoholic father was a poor combination. The 40 minutes she had until she was due to arrive at his place would get her there just in time.

By the time she made it to her dad's and knocked on the door she was fifteen minutes late. She had texted him to inform him she was late to due traffic. Worry gnawed at her stomach, but she hoped that the text was enough to settle his worry. The knot in her stomach wound tighter as she raised her hand to knock on the door.

When he answered with a smile on his face, she relaxed. He was clean shaved, and his hair was washed and brushed.

"Katie," he said in a breathless whisper, and almost fell over as he crossed the threshold to hug her. "You look so beautiful sweetie."

"Thanks dad." He didn't smell like alcohol, he smelt clean. It wasn't the scent she remembered from when she was younger and burrowed her face in his neck as he hugged her. It wasn't the sting and heavy musk that the smell of alcohol would give off, though.

"Come in, come in!" He ushered her into the apartment and she grounded to a halt. It wasn't sparkling clean or particularly tidy, but there were no bottles lying around. It didn't smell in there, either.

"Dad, it looks good." Despite shrugging his shoulders as if it was nothing he was smiling ear to ear. A blush crept on his pale cheeks. It made him look a little healthier, and drew the attention away from his trembling hands.

"I ordered some… pasta for us to eat," he said as he walked towards the kitchen, and she trailed behind him. "There's uh this pasta with like an avocado sauce with it I think. then I also have cannelloni. Maybe I should've called you to ask what you wanted, but I guessed?"

"I think the cannelloni sounds nice," she said. She put a hand on his shoulders to quiet his anxiety. His hand was jerking in a repetitive circle, and eyes were jumping without focusing. "Dad… it's alright, let's eat okay?" He took a deep breath and nodded his head.

They sat down at the dining table in the adjoining room, an she could smell the dust on the shelves of the vitrine where her mother had kept the designer glasses and bowls on neat rows. The room was near ghost-like with how untouched it appeared to be. When he tried to turn on the light nothing happened. Kate went back into the kitchen and got candles and a lighter, putting several of them on the table as her father looked on with a fallen face. He was embarrassed, she knew that, but didn't want to comment on it. Just like she didn't want to comment on the last time they had been in here.

It had been less than a week after her mother's murder, and the two of them had out of pure habit sat down at the table. As they looked up at each other it was as if the two of them had thought of the same thing, their gazes averting and looking towards the seat her mother should've occupied. Then it felt as if her heart had been put in a blender, pain too palpable to deal with.

 _"_ _I can't do this Katie."_

Her father had said then, and walked into the kitchen and poured his first glass of wine. Every time things got tough after that he went back to that glass of wine. Again, and again, and again. Back then she had thought that it was a normal numbing mechanism, coping even, but now she knew better. The glasses of water that stood on the table was a stark reminder of why it wasn't wine. The only smile she could offer him over the candles were a forced one as a lump formed in her throat. How did this become their lives? They sat opposite each other like strangers, a ghost hovering by their sides at all times, the silence nearly impenetrable.

"Dad, I've got something to tell you," she said, breaking the silence between them. "It's something… good." She added that because she saw his eyebrows draw together, and a shift in his eyes that resembled panic.

"Okay, what do you want to tell me Katie?" He took a large gulp of water.

"I'm pregnant." He put the glass down slowly, and then leaned forward in his chair and stared into her eyes. She bit her lip as she waited for him to respond.

"Is this good thing?" he asked. She nodded, assuring him. Even though she was apprehensive, and even though it didn't feel quite real, it was supposed to be a good thing. "Then congratulations Kate, I'm so happy for you." She could see the tears well up in his eyes, but before they could spill over he grabbed a napkin and dabbed his eyes. As if seized by a strange force it jolted her heart, and it started to swell and expand in ways she had kept it from doing in years when she was with him. Happiness, she identified the feeling as happiness. Uncontrollable, unpredictable, and fearless happiness that didn't evoke the same fearlessness in her; it scared her.

"I'm due in late May, so I'm about 15 weeks now, and in two weeks I'm going to find out if it's a boy or a girl." She kept talking so that she would not have to think about the way her heart warmed her chest, and the chill in her head.

"Who's the father?" Her dad was leaning back in his chair now, hands lying palm down on the table, and a proud smile on his face.

"It's the author… Richard Castle, he's the father."

"The one who writes the crime novels?" He leaned forward again, stroking his chin as if he was trying to think of something.

"Yes, that's him… he's really nice." He smiled at dazed smile at her. "He lives in SOHO with his daughter, she's 16. His mother lives there too. She's an actress on Broadway, and they're all sweet, they're really sweet." She thought back to the dinner she had eaten with them a few weeks back. Alexis had been a bit apprehensive, and that was to be expected, but Martha's enthusiasm and warm personality was wonderful.

"I'm really happy for you Kate, you deserve the best of the best." She could hear the way his voice hitched, but the tears did not spill from his eyes. "Johanna would have loved to be here," he said, and looked at the chair Kate's mom would have been sitting in had she been alive. The happiness and warmth which had started to expand from her chest was doused with cold water, retreating rapidly and disappearing into the depths. Her mother wasn't there.

"Yes, she would've," Kate said.

The conversation was hard to salvage after that. What they managed was scraps of conversations that died quick. He asked her a little about her pregnancy, but there wasn't much of it to tell. There hadn't been any morning sickness, and mostly she felt a bit more lethargic that usual, but that was about it. As the clock crept forward she felt the sleepiness take hold of her limbs, and she told her dad she had to get home.

He followed her to the door and watched her in silence as she dressed.

"I'm sorry Kate," he said when she had buttoned her jacket – it strained over her stomach, the bloating usually got worse at the end of the day. "I'm sorry that I haven't been there for you."

"I'm sorry too dad, for running away." The two of them smiled at each other. They were tight worn smiles that said more than any words could. They spoke of forgiveness.

"Neither of us are without sin." They weren't religious but Kate knew what he meant, and drew him in for a hug. He was warm, and there was almost a scent in the crook of his neck that reminded her of her father. Maybe this baby was not just her savior, but her father's too.

When she got in the taxi and said her address the taxi driver scoffed at her. He informed her of an incoming storm that meant that she was his last customer. Meaning he wasn't going to drive out of the city for anyone but himself. She slumped back against the seat of the car. There was still the subway, but she didn't want to take it alone at this time of night, which left either staying at her father's or calling Rick.

No matter how well she parted with her father there was little chance she would stay a single night in that apartment with him and her mother's ghost. So with the meter ticking she picked up the phone and dialed Rick.

"Hello?" he answered almost straight away.

"Hey Rick, it's Kate… I'm on my way home from my dad's but the driver won't take me out of the city because of the stom. Is there any chance I can crash with you?" He was the father to her child, she argued, it would be good if they formed a relationship of sorts. She would need to get to know him even better, and trust him. This could be a good start. They had only been around each other a handful of times the past months. It was due time to start becoming more than acquaintances.

"Yes of course that's not a problem at all!" There was a clatter of sound in the background as if he dropped something.

"Are you sure, because if it's not possible I can probably find some way to get out there." She bit her lip and looked into the rearview mirror where she could see the taxi driver looking expectantly at her. The meter was running.

"No, no, come over here," he said. "I'll prepare the guest bedroom for you."

"Thank you Rick," she said, and the smile that crept on her face spread a blush to her cheeks.

"No problem, see you soon?" She looked up and nodded at the driver to start driving.

"See you soon." She rattled off the address to Rick's apartment and collapsed back against the seats not quite understanding the blush that blazed her cheeks

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 **A/n2** : thanks for reading! Reviews are greatly appreciated, I love hearing what you think :D


	8. Chapter 8

**A/n:** Thank you everyone for your patience with me, I know the updates are coming slow. Life has been a mess for me lately after an event at work 3 weeks ago. Basically I took a vacation from life for a while, but now I'm back again, so hopefully the updates will be more frequent. This chapter is sort of filler sort of not a filler. Decide for yourself, either way it's short. I got stuck at this chapter for months! Hope you like it!

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 _And in the winter night sky ships are sailing_  
 _Looking down on these bright blue city lights._  
 _And they won't wait, and they won't wait, and they won't wait_  
 _We're here to stay, we're here to stay, we're here to stay._

 **OF MICE AND MEN – King and Lionheart**

 **CHAPTER 8 – Snow**

She clutched the cup of tea tightly in her hands. The warmth seeped through her cold fingers and warm up her blood. The tranquility of the moment had her turning her lips up in a small smile, reveling in the feeling of rooting. The earth wasn't spinning out of control. The air wasn't in short supply. Her mind sluggishly registered the letters – but not the words – of the book titles in his shelves. Golden arches of As, and worn down and barely visible Ts lined the shelves as proud trophies of alternative lives lived. Dreams which expanded beyond the mind to have been recorded on paper.

In the periphery of her vision she could see him sprawled out on the couch. He was pretending to read the morning's paper, but he kept glancing up at her. Hours before he'd left her at her place for dinner with his daughter, and he had not expected her to turn up at his place. They led two completely different lives which occasionally seemed to intersect. But as time got on they became more woven together, each life affected by the other's. She stalled her thinking before she ventured into territories where the world would jerk to a start and spin her into the dark vastness of the universe.

"How's Alexis?" she asked after a long silence, her eyes resting on a larger book. She didn't need to read the title to know that it was The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Her fingers itched to touch it. She remembered being a kid, flipping through the pages with unprecedented eagerness, for her, eager to devour the contents of it.

"She's good, busy studying for finals." She looked over her shoulder and saw him sitting on the couch watching her attentively. Not bothering with the pretense of the paper anymore. "How's your dad?"

"Sober," she said, watching him as his eyebrows furrowed just slightly in confusion, and then raise up in understanding. "Alcoholic." sShe sighed as she sat down on the couch next to him. That word was an unuttered word. It was something she hid in shame to not expose her own failures as a daughter. She'd said it a few times when she still lived at home, but back then she would naively start with "he's not". Denial engrained so deep that she thought that if she denied it then it wouldn't be true.

"Is that why you came back to New York?" he asked. A laugh bubbled up, nervous, and uncontrollable. It lasted only for a few seconds, but the piercing stare he gave her made her want to cry instead.

"No," she replied. "It was… one of the reasons I left." With him honesty felt natural. It felt like an obligation to not only him, but to herself, to tell someone in her life the truth of what her life had been. Not the gritty and dark parts of herself. Not bare herself naked. But to give someone a glimpse at who she actually was.

"Why _did_ you come back?" Her lungs suddenly felt depraved of air so she drew in a sudden deep breath. It was much harder than she thought to open herself up, to show him herself. Because despite keeping many walls she pulled up she still felt completely bare and vulnerable. As if she would crumble by a gust of air.

"I looked up one day and didn't feel like I was in the right place, I didn't belong where I was, and..." she paused for a moment, weighing the words she wanted to say against each other. "New York was the only place that I could think of that I last felt like I belonged."

"Do you feel like you belong now?"

"Sometimes." Tears prickled her eyes. He looked at her with such intensity that she had to look away, focusing on a spot on the top corner of his shelf. "I feel now that I'm on the path that will get me there."

"I think whatever happens in our lives, good or bad, was meant to be. We were meant to meet that night, to have this baby," he said, reaching across the couch to brush his hand over hers that still clutched the cup of tea.

"Like destiny?" she asked, raising her eyebrows dubiously at him. "You believe life has a predetermined path, and we're just going through the motions?"

"When you say it like that it just sounds boring." She wiggled her eyebrows and took a sip of her tea. "It's something magical. Like what you do in life leads to specific events, and you know that no matter what you are never off your path. You are always looking in the right direction."

"That sounds… I wish I could believe in something like that." She released the hold of her cup, putting it on the table and relaxing into the couch again. She rested her head in the palm of her hand, scanning his face as he continued talking.

"I think pain, and bad things, happen for us to learn something, to keep us on our track."

"But… that also means that people die for a reason, to further other people's destiny." She said matter-of-factly, seeking holes in his theory.

"Yes, that's a grim way to look at it, but then that must be true." She shook her head.

"That means that some people only live for others, that their sole purpose of existing is to help other people's destiny. And it would also mean that your destiny isn't in itself an inherently _good_ thing. It could also mean that you are destined to be killed tomorrow in an accident only to make someone else stop texting and driving."

"That's not an argument _against_ destiny though," he said, and sat up straighter on the couch as he prepared his argument. "If a person dies it means that their destiny, their purpose in life, and everything they were supposed to do for others and themselves, has been fulfilled. And that fulfillment intersects with other people's lives. Making destiny a spider web of connections rather than one path."

He paused for a second, staring into the middle distance to gather his thoughts, and then turned to look at her again.

"Take your life, what you do now affects me, it affects my daughter, my mother, and it affects your father. The people you meet at work and those you help, the people you've hurt, and the stranger you smiled to on the street – all those lives crossing yours has been a part of not only your destiny, but also theirs. and how you were affected by them in turns affects me, and so on."

"Destiny means we're all connected?" She bit her lip, musing over the theories he put forward.

"Yes, and being connected means that you're… you're never detached from others. You are always a part of the bigger picture," he said with a smile.

"That does sound better than simply living a path that's already been decided for you." She smiled back at him. Watched as his face that had been lit up in excitement as he spoke, with a feverish tone that almost had her own heart racing along with his theories, settle into a smile that didn't radiate as he had done as he spoke but still simmer with the stimulus the debate had given him. It had been a while since he had argued his points like this with someone. Someone who met his theories with questions and challenged them.

"You still don't believe in destiny?" She shook her head. "Not even in the slightest?" She opened her mouth to say something, but before the words fell off her lips she shut it again. She wasn't quite sure what she believed.

"It sounds appealing. Nut it's one of those things which you can't prove, it's just a theory that people… I don't know, seek comfort in?" She sighed.

"But you do believe there is a right path?" he asked then, prodding a bit further, wanting to pick her brain and find out how she ticked. The past months they had spent circling each other politely. Smiling when they should, speaking what was expected of them. Finally he was able to start peeling back the layers of her onion.

"I believe there are many paths we could take that will lead to different consequences. Some which are good and some which are bad." She shrugged her shoulders. Then she thought of an example and held out her hand as if she was offering the story on a plate. "For example, the other day we picked up a kid. He'd taken a hit in a school fight after getting involved in the wrong crow. Had he made other choices he might've been a mathlete, or valedictorian. Now he's got a record, and bad influences."

"I think people like us prove that life isn't just coincidence. That things don't just happen. Because what were the chances that we would end up at the same bar that night? What were the chances that we would see each other, speak to each other? What was the chances that the condom would break, that the plan b wouldn't work?"

She drank from her cup as she contemplated his words, tasting them, and watching him as she mused over them. The idea of fate was both intimidating in how little say she would have in it, and comforting in knowing then that she had never strayed off her path.

"I was meant to meet you?" she asked almost laughing as she hid her smiling mouth behind the large cup of tea. "You're my savior?"

"I didn't know you needed saving," he said, smoothing it over as he heard the somber tone in her voice.

"You're perceptive enough, Rick. I think you know why you haven't asked to know more about me." The easy mood started to fade. She looked over towards the window where the snow was deftly falling from the sky, looking deceptively serene.

"I figured that the topic would eventually come up… we've only known each other for 3 months," he trailed off. His eyes flickered over her face for a few long seconds before he quietly continued. "Didn't want to impose".

"It was my mother," she said quickly, before she lost her courage. It had built in her gut, like the water tension at the surface of an overfilled cup where the water waited in suspense at a single jolt that would cause it to spill over. "I was home for Christmas my freshman year of college, and we were going out for dinner. My mother was going to meet us there, but she didn't show up. When my dad and I got home a few hours later there was a cop waiting for us." She drew a shaky breath, remembering Detective Raglan standing by their door expressionless. "She'd been murdered, stabbed to death in an alley. Said it was some robbery gone wrong, they took all her jewelry… they never caught the guy."

"You don't believe it was a robbery?" he asked.

"No." She had been furious at how they neatly they boxed it up, put a generic sticker on it to avoid having to deal with it. "I had wanted to be a lawyer before she died, like her. But it just felt meaningless without her, everything felt so wrong. Like no matter what I did I was doing it without her, and that felt like such a betrayal, you know?"

Of course he did not know, he had never experienced that type of loss in his life. He'd been spared death, his hardships had been in other forms. His experiences with death was not personal in the same way. There hadn't been memories to attach to bodies, emotions that echoed inside long after their hearts stopped beating. He had no experience.

"I considered applying to the police academy instead. Become a detective, but my dad picked up the bottle, and I just _ran_ instead." She looked up at the ceiling, hoping to stop the tears that were forming in her eyes from spilling over. "I tried to help him, but I was only 19 and I was grieving too. I hated him for making me suffer even more than I already was, that he made me lose a father as well."

Without hesitation he pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly to him. She turned her face towards him, drawing in the deep scent that she remembered in the crook of his neck. He was warmth, something alluring in the safety his arms brought. "You are a good guy, Rick," she said into his neck, resting her cheek against it.

"You are a good person too, Kate." His voice was low, barely a whisper into her hair. Her eyes closed instinctively. The tears that pressed against her eyes were a yearning to believe him, believe that despite her past she could be good enough for him. It struck her that he was the first person in a very long time that she wanted to be someone for. The desire to transform into someone happier, someone with a purpose, wasn't just selfish anymore. That desire had expanded to him – she realized that she wanted him in a way she hadn't wanted anyone before.

All she had to do was to be better.

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 **A/n2:**

Reviews and the like are very much welcome, I love to hear your thoughts! If you want to find me on tumblr my fandom tumblr is redkiera, and my personal one is sinisterkid92.

:)


	9. Chapter 9

A/n: This is the chapter I've been wanting to share with you for ages. Or, it's probably next chapter. Also this is a chapter where I've taken creative liberties because there's only so much you can google… Hope you enjoy!

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 _Staring at the bottom of your glass_  
 _Hoping one day you'll make a dream last_  
 _But dreams come slow and they go so fast_  
 _You see her when you close your eyes_  
 _Maybe one day you'll understand why_  
 _Everything you touch surely dies_  
 **PASSENGER – LET HER GO**

CHAP 9 – Emergency

"You've got a bump now," Rick said as Kate lifted up her shirt. She glanced down at herself and saw the protruding between her hip bones – an unmistakably pregnant swelling. It had been a slight bloating up until a few days ago, only becoming noticeable late in the evening, but Thursday she woke up and it was there. And it was only growing larger. The baggy shirts and jackets at work still hid it well. As did the large shirts she had taken to wearing since her normal clothes would ride up and expose her stomach to the chill December air.

"Yes, it's growing." She smiled nervously at Rick, and shifted her hips until she was lying in a more comfortable position. Then gave the ultrasound technician the same smile, indicating that she was ready to start. When the technician squirted gel on her stomach she watched Rick, instead of the screen. There she saw furrow of his eyebrows as he concentrated on what the images showed.

As the technician pointed out the baby's profile she turned her head away from his – his face paralyzed in a look of wonder – and looked at the screen herself. She recognized the profile of the nose immediately. It was the same profile that she had, and the same profile her mother had. It hadn't occurred to her before as a possibility that this baby could actually inherit some of the familial traits she had. Because in comparison to Rick she had felt small. In comparison to him she felt insignificant to the future of this child. Somehow it would have felt more natural to give birth to a carbon copy of him than a baby which bore any resemblance to her, or worse: her mother.

As her heart tightened in her chest she could feel it move inside of her. It was a feeling she had just started to experience a few days ago but wasn't quite sure if it truly was movement or not until now. Now she could see it move on the screen, squirming under the disturbance of the ultrasound.

"There you can see the baby's hand right by its head," the technician said. Real. It took every ounce of her being not to freak out, and to keep her heart from pounding out of her chest. She was an intelligent woman. She had always known what this pregnancy ultimately meant. Yet she hadn't been prepared to feel as if a bucket of the ice cold water of reality had been dropped on her.

As the technician examined the image of their child, Rick grabbed her hand in a tight squeeze, looking at her with large smiling eyes.

"I was thinking that after this we could go look at a stroller, and a car seat, what do you say?" The panic that was bubbling in her chest threatened to blow out of her ears like steam.

"Uh, I've got plans," she said. She didn't have plans, but she couldn't be near him when she couldn't hold it together anymore. This was a terrible mistake, and one she could not rectify now. It was too late. Now Rick was looking between her and the screen as if she was giving him the best Christmas present ever. If it hadn't been him she wouldn't have entertained the idea of continuing this pregnancy. If it wasn't for him it would not feel as if this pregnancy would only lead to all things wrong. She thought back to the night she spent at his apartment in the guest room. That night it had felt right, as if everything was aligning and she was about to be experiencing Real Happiness. She didn't know when that feeling faded. There was a sense of doom now. This baby might look like her, and this baby would also inherit some of her mannerisms. Would it also inherit her sadness? Would it inherit the heavy cloud that pushed against her shoulders, and the fog that clung to her mind? It would have her as its mother, someone who'd spent so much of her life feeling like an empty shell.

"Do you want to know the gender?" the technician asked, pulling Kate out of her thoughts. Kate and Rick nodded their heads. They'd agreed on this before, both of them had enough with surprises with this pregnancy. To know one more thing would be one variable that they could control.

"Okay, it looks like it's a girl!" Her stomach churned, but she forced a smile on her face as Rick's face lit up. A daughter, she thought with a strange sort of finality. Her daughter was kicking in her stomach, and he smiled at her because she was growing his daughter inside of her. It was absurd, it was insane. It was incomprehensible.

She held it together as they finished off the ultrasound. She held it together as they saw the doctor. She held it together as she and Rick rode down the elevator to the ground floor, and as they walked out side by side while he flipped through the ultrasound photos, talking about how Alexis would love to have a baby sister. She held it together as she walked away from him, and as she got on the subway and sat down.

The ultrasound photos were in her hands. They were black and white pictures of tiny feet, and a beautiful profile photo that was strikingly sharp. This was it. This was reality. She had never in her life thought about children. Even before her mother died she had never dreamed about a future where she had them. Her dreams had been about being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and it had overshadowed any other thoughts of the future. Back then she had been a single-minded girl who thought that nothing could get in the way of what she wanted. Now she wasn't sure what it was that she wanted anymore. She wasn't sure if she wanted anything.

She was 17 weeks pregnant, and in 6 months she would have a baby girl. In 6 months she would be a mother. Her stomach lurched, and she bolted out of her seat and through the subway doors as they opened. She threw up in a trashcan on the station.

"Shit," she muttered, shoving her hand down her pocket to find a tissue paper to wipe her mouth with. "Fuck." Tears prickled in her eyes. Only in one other part of her life had she felt this useless and unequipped, and that was her mother's death.

This was her life now.

She shook her head in an attempt to rid herself of the panic that was cursing through her veins. It proved futile, but it did afford her enough calmness to be able to collect herself, and look less freaked out than she actually was. If she had learn one thing it was how to look okay when the world was falling apart. A man standing a few feet from her curled his mouth in disgust as he looked at her.

Inside her head she was cursing herself for ever going back to New York.

XXX

Christmas day was only a few days later. To stop herself from freaking out too much she had started to compartmentalize her life. Even though her heart leapt at the idea of speaking to Rick she kept herself from calling him. She only responded to his texts. For her to function she needed to breathe, and it wasn't possible to do so when he was everywhere. If she hadn't been pregnant she would have dealt with it the same way she did when she became pregnant.

Seeking comfort in superficial connections that made her feel close to something helped her keep afloat. It helped her blame the weight that was on her chest that was suffocating her on someone else. She could blame it on the way the men would maneuver her out the door, or treat her more like a toy than a human being. Actually recognizing that the suffocation was caused by her own doing – that it was independent of these random men who made her feel alive for just a night – would ruin her. It is possible to run away from people. When other people make you feel bad you can leave, but you cannot run from yourself.

This time she could not flirt with a colleague and end up clutching the tiles of a bathroom or tangled up in his sheets. Going to a bar wasn't an option, and there were no people she could call. This time she would have to deal with it sensibly, and not by giving herself another reason to avoid her image in the mirror in the morning. The men she met gave her a reason to dislike, and maybe even hate, herself. With each man she could feel that she was falling apart a little more. Against all better judgment she used to long for being completely broken, because then it would make sense. The pain would be logical, and she could build from it.

As it was now she was hanging in limbo, unable to step in any direction.

Most people would be ecstatic after seeing their baby for the first time, and she was – the pain that bubbled inside was the fear.

Instead of calling Rick to wish him and his family a Merry Christmas, she took an extra shift at work, ignoring the doctor's recommendation of going on maternity leave. There was no way she could afford going on leave so early. The thought of the financial burden which this would result in had her metaphorically sticking her head in the sand.

"How you feeling Beckett?" her partner Esposito asked as he sat behind the wheel. She watched him for a moment as he tested the radio and that all the dials where were they should – just as he did at the start of every shift.

"Like I want to get out of her already." She smiled at him as he shook his head at her.

"Don't act like you're never been slow out of the bay." He acted hurt, but she knew him better than that. Since she started working with him their relationship had been light with bantering between pickups. "They're taking the bus into shop after Christmas, so we're getting a new one for a while."

"They're going to fix the doors?" He nodded. "About time."

"Overdue," he agreed. "And are you having a niña or a niño? The suspense is _killing_ me."

The ultrasound was in the pocket of her uniform, a copy she had made to keep with her. It felt natural to have it on her at all times, as a reminder of all the things she needed to do before her daughter was born. It felt like something a good mother would do. She took it out of her pocket and held it out between them.

"A girl," she clarified.

"Congrats, Becks, that's awesome!" He pulled out of the bay as they received a radio about a pick-up just five minutes from their location. She confirmed to the central that they were on-route, and then turned back to him. "How's writer boy taking having another girl?"

"He's happy." Ecstatic even. Since they last saw each other two days ago at the doctor's he had already started planning a nursery. When he'd suggested an elephant theme – he said that they symbolized intelligence and peace – she vetoed that theme, and suggested owls instead. Her mother loved elephants, and the last thing she wanted for her daughter was for her to carry the weight of her grandmother's murder.

"You know, if my girl got pregnant I would ask her to marry me, but I guess I'm traditional like that." He was disproving of Rick, and it was Kate's own fault because she had omitted a lot of information. Esposito didn't need to know that much about her personal life, what he needed was the information that made them a good team. It was to keep normalcy between them, maintaining a professional relationship that kept them safe.

"Neither of us is traditional," she said instead. "If he asked me to marry him I would say no – I think I see the place, over there." She pointed to a crowd of people at the side walk

From the radio they'd gotten they knew it was an 80-year old man who had fallen over with a possible hip fracture. The ice wasn't forgiving, and least of all to the already unsteady feet of the elderly.

They got out of the bus and approached the scene. Together they assessed the situation. The man on the ground was a bit anxious about ending up in the hospital. But he was calm about what had happened and could answer all questions. Since the man had a suspected hip fracture, and couldn't support himself on his legs, they had to roll him onto the gurney. He wasn't a thin or a short man, and was taller than both Kate and Esposito, and was well over 200lbs. It wasn't anything they were unused to, and the moves that they were required to make to get him into the ambulance was ingrained into their muscles long ago. It was all automatic.

After dropping the man off at the hospital they returned to the bus, and waited for the radio to spark to life again with information of their next pick-up.

"So you don't want to marry the guy?" Esposito asked, revisiting the conversation from earlier. She shot him a glare, but it didn't succeed in making him back off.

"Who says I want to marry _anyone_?" she challenged, not pleased that she was still the topic of conversation.

"C'mon Becks, it can't be that bad." He nudged her with his elbow. When she turned to look at him there was a large grin eating at his face. "I just want to know that my partner is treated as she should be."

"He's a good guy, Espo. He's a good dad," she said, rolling her eyes at him. "And I'm a big girl."

"And you're getting bigger." The laugh he let escape was far too pleased for her liking, as if he had waited for the moment to be able to crack that joke. Yet she couldn't help but to be carried away with his laughter. Esposito was a vet, and the toll it had taken on him was visible in the lines on his face and in his eyes. There was no doubt that he struggled a lot with his experiences, but he was adamant of living life as happy as possible now. Because of his experiences she could tolerate his jokes and nudges more. There was a comradeship where they both stood on the same ground.

"Har har, watch yourself or I'll call your mother." The day continued with a few lulls here and there. But it was Christmas eve, which meant that people were drinking, and people were angry at the stores. There was one pick-up involving two men who had been in a fist fight over the last copy of a video game. After that Esposito and Kate shared war stories of working on black Friday. When they had had dinner at the station, they headed back out into New York.

It seemed that the day would be calm, despite the day it was. Esposito and Kate knew that the calm could be deceiving, though, and had no hopes of it continuing this way. The people who called about their neighbors fighting seemed to be a call which would break the good streak they were having. It came in at 1 a.m on Christmas day, and they had been sitting outside a 24-hour diner drinking coffee when the radio crackled to life. Both of them knew that this was the call they had anticipated all day.

"Copy. Is there going to be police at the scene? Over." She questioned into the radio as Esposito turned on the ignition.

"Affirmative. Two uniforms are already at the scene. Over," came with a crackle of the radio.

"Roger. Bus 41319 is on route, will arrive in ten minutes. Out." Esposito looked over at her, and then down at her stomach. In uniform it was not obvious that she was pregnant.

"I'm good Espo," she told him. "I'm pregnant, not sick." He didn't look convinced, but there wasn't much to do about it anyway. Ever since she had told him about her pregnancy a few weeks back he had been overprotective of her. He was always mindful of how much she was able to handle, and that she didn't take too many risks. Some were risks were unavoidable, though.

From the moment they walked through the door Kate knew this was the type of call that could turn bad fast. The tension was thick. Though the apartment was only lit up by a desk lamp at half glow, she could see the muscles in the police officers' backs flexing with exertion as they held the two men apart. They were on their stomachs on the floor, but still struggling against the cop hold they had been put in. Death threats overlapped each other as the men yelled.

One of the men whose eyes looked like they were lit up by feral rage had a large cut above his brow. Blood was gushing out, staining the carpet below, and matting his hair.

"Neighbors called in about loud noises from this apartment. They would've beaten each other to death hadn't we arrived," the uniform cop said. "He's got one cut to his brow, I wouldn't be surprised if they've managed to crack each other's ribs." The man underneath the cop yanked his arms, a futile attempt at getting out of the cop's hold and the cuffs he had been put in. "Stop moving!"

"I can see right away that we need to take him in," Kate said. "He will need stitches." She stepped around the two, looking over at Esposito who was talking to the other officer. He radioed for a second ambulance for the other person. "Sir, are you in pain?"

"I have a pig on my back, do you see what he's doing? This is my house, you've got no business coming into my house! Of course I'm in fucking pain!" The man raised his head to look at the officer over his shoulder. "You need to join weight watchers!"

"Be quiet," the officer growled, holding the man tighter.

"I'm Beckett," she said to the officer then.

"Officer Kent," the officer grunted.

"Okay Officer Kent, we're not going to be able to load him into the ambulance with his hands cuffed on his back." She called Esposito over with a jerk of her head. "We have to get him out of the cuffs to get him onto the gurney, we might need to sedate him if he gets violent." Esposito's face was like set in stone, the lines of it deep and unmoving. He nodded.

"Wait for my call."

They prepared for the transfer in near silence, only giving each other short directives. The men were still struggling with the officers, the adrenaline in their body keeping them from wearing out. Despite Officer Kent's heavier body he was nearly thrown off a couple of times. Each time Kent had to bear down again Kate and Esposito looked at each other. This could go any way if they were unlucky and not vigilant enough.

With a few nods of their heads Officer Kent removed the cuffs from the man as Esposito informed that if he resisted they would be forced to sedate him. For a brief moment the threat appeared as if it had had an impact. The man laid still, waiting for Officer Kent to shift his weight off of his back so that they could turn the man over. Kate had just grasped the man's arm when it swung up, the elbow hitting her chin and slamming her jaw shut. Her skull vibrated, disorienting her enough to lose her grip of the man. For a split second too long the officer's attention was diverted to her, instead of the man.

There was a blur of motion which she wouldn't ever be able to make sense of. Kent was on his back, and the shouting from the other man intensified. Officer Kent's partner reached for his gun at the same time as the man pulled out one of his own.

No moment in her life had been as long as that one. Whatever the Officers shouted she could hear it as if she were under water. The man's mouth shouted something which she could not make sense of. Even Esposito was shouting, but he was shouting at her. They were on separate ends of the room, she was kneeling on the floor, still grasping her chin in shock. She couldn't move.

Kate was acutely aware of her daughter. This was no situation for her child to be in. If something were to happen to her, if Kate lost her, she would die. Whatever life had been before her daughter it was nothing, it was incomplete. This wasn't the right path, this wasn't what was supposed to happen. The tightness in her chest was unfair, she thought. It wasn't right that this was the moment where her love would explode. How could she ever have felt that becoming this girl's mother wasn't the best thing that had ever happened to her?

She moved her hand from her chin, splaying it over her stomach in a pathetic attempt to shield her daughter from the gun that was being waved towards her. The man was screaming something to her, but she couldn't hear it. All she could hear was the wild thumping of her heart. She could feel it out in her fingertips.

"Please, I'm pregnant," she got out, but it wasn't more than a whisper. She didn't know if the words carried to his ears.

"I said get down!" His words rushed to her ears, but it was too late.

The shots that rang out were deafening. At first she didn't feel the pain, the shock delaying the pain signals to her brain. As she registered what had happened, the seconds pause after she had tumbled to the ground, there was only one thought ringing through her head. She was going to die.

Then the world went black before her eyes.

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A/n2: if you've read my stories before you should know that anything can happen here at this point. Cliffhangers are my loves.


	10. Chapter 10

Now this chapter didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to update. Life has thrown me quite a few curveballs the past few weeks/two months, so writing gets deprioritized. I want to thank you so much for the response to the last chapter, there has been some reviews to this story which I go back and read again and again, and again, and the response in general is pretty unprecedented when it comes to stories of mine. I hope you will continue to enjoy this story, and follow Rick and Kate's journey to parnthood and beyond :)

I also want to thank _inkorrekteskonzept_ on tumblr for reading through this chapter and helping me making it better! You're awesome :D

* * *

 _How I wish I could walk through the doors of my mind;_  
 _Hold memory close at hand,_  
 _Help me understand the years._  
 _How I wish I could choose between Heaven and Hell._  
 _How I wish I would save my soul._  
 _I'm so cold from fear._

 **TEARS AND RAIN - JAMES BLUNT**

CHAPTER 10 – LIMBO

There was a chaos of sound as she woke, regaining consciousness little by little. Far away she could hear the incessant shrill of a monitor as someone went into cardiac arrest, and around her were hurried voices. Then she felt the pain. It shot up her arm and seized her body, vibrating in her with every jostle of the gurney she was on.

"Ma'am, can you hear me?" a nurse's voice demanded. She groaned, and attempted to turn on her non-injured arm and curl up around herself. The straps that had been put over her legs in the ambulance stopped her movements. "Ma'am?"

The gurney stopped moving, and she was swiftly lifted onto a bed. Someone shone a light in her eyes, and by instinct she tried to move herself away from the light.

"Ma'am, I need you to answer a few questions," the nurse said again as someone was cutting open her sleeve. "Do you remember if you hit your head?"

"No, no I don't think so," Kate said, eyes frantically looking around the ER she had ended up in. She'd been shot, she remembered that. She'd been shot in her arm. "I'm pregnant, I'm 17 weeks pregnant."

"Okay," the nurse nodded and looked over at the one Kate presumed was the doctor.

"Page Dr. Grant and have her check her out," the doctor said over her head. "Can you tell me your full name ma'am?"

"Kathrine Beckett." She couldn't help the scream that pushed out of her throat as he lifted her arm.

"Okay, Mrs. Beckett, you were shot on shift in your arm, and you lost consciousness at the scene. You have been bleeding quite heavily, and there is no exit wound, so we need to take you to surgery." She nodded her head, but wasn't able to comprehend what was happening. Surgery? "Dr. Grant from maternity will make sure everything is alright with your baby before we take you up. Are you feeling any cramping or pain in your abdomen, have you had any complications up until now in your pregnancy?"

"I can't… I can't feel anything but my arm," Kate groaned, noticing the blood that was staining the white paper on the bed beneath her. Moments after a woman with greying hair pushed through the doors and into the room she was in, and an ultrasound machine followed.

"What do we have here?" Dr. Grant asked, and smiled a comforting smile at Kate where she was lying on her back on the table.

"Mrs. Beckett, 29 years old and 17 weeks pregnant, so far a normal pregnancy," the doctor replied without Dr. Grant looking up at him once.

"Okay Mrs. Beckett, have you experienced any cramping?" The pain in her arm was all consuming, she couldn't think far beyond it. There was little else to be felt. Nothing could compare to the sensation of her arm being ripped apart from the inside.

"I don't know…" How could she not know if she was having a miscarriage? This was her child and her responsibility. A mother should know these things! Tears were rolling down her cheeks before she even understood that's he was crying. "Is she alright?"

"I'm going to have a quick look here." Dr. Grant moved her hand over Kate's stomach, pressing firm hands against her abdomen. Kate couldn't gauge anything from the doctor's face. She couldn't concentrate long enough to be able to figure out if that was a good or a bad thing. A squirt of jelly was put on her stomach, just like the days before when she had found out that she was expecting a daughter.

There was a pause. The room seemed to slow down a fraction as Dr. Gran examined the ultrasound picture she received on the screen. The shrill of the machine in the distance quietened to a muted beating, but she did not pay attention to that.

"Everything is looking good with your baby right now," Dr. Grant said, removing the wand she had pressed to Kate's stomach. "Heart rate is a little low, but I'm going to monitor her during your surgery to make sure everything is alright."

"Why wouldn't she be alright?" she asked through gritted teeth when the railings on the bed were pulled up with a quick snap.

"Your partner informed us that you received a blow to the stomach. With the shock, and blood loss, we want to make sure that your baby isn't affected by the stress." Kate nodded. She didn't remember being hit in the stomach, everything had gone black moments after she had been shot in the arm.

"Is there anyone you want us to call Mrs. Beckett?" the other doctor asked. He had never given her his name.

"It's miss…" she corrected.

"Is there anyone you want us to call Miss Beckett?" he corrected himself.

"Yeah, the baby's dad," she said. "His number…" She couldn't remember his phone number. This was the time she needed it the most, and she couldn't recall it. "My OB has it, it's Dr. Donovan, he's at the Family Tree Clinic." She didn't know at that moment if they could request his contact information. All her years of being an EMT and there was little she could remember about it. The pain ate her up from inside. As they rolled her into the elevator the bed jumped over the threshold, sending a jolt up her body, and shaking her arm. She bit down on her lip to keep from screaming in pain.

The first thing she regained as consciousness flooded back to her system were sounds. From the open door into the hall she could hear the low voices of nurses talking, and laughter from a room far away. Then she could feel her body. The sheets were tucked in around her – her whole body felt fuzzy. There was a dull throbbing in her arm which she knew should be painful, but didn't feel more than heavy. When she blinked her eyes open she was met with a vacant chair pulled up next to her bed.

She was in the hospital, she remembered. She had been shot in the arm during a pick-up of a man who'd been arrested following an altercation with another man in his apartment. The details were fuzzy, but she remembered the fear.

With slow working fingers she held her right hand over her stomach. It was still swollen, but she didn't know. She closed her eyes again, squeezing them shut to fight off the tears.

"Please be okay, baby, please be okay," she whispered to her stomach, rubbing her thumb over the protrusion. Yesterday, she thought it was yesterday, she had been scared. She thought that she didn't want to be a mother. She thought that it had been a horrible mistake, and that she would end up being the worst thing that ever happened to this child. She thought she would have to leave it. Now she couldn't imagine a life like that. A life without her baby, a life where she was not her daughter's mother. Tears pressed behind her eyes, and she couldn't fight them anymore.

"Hey… Hey!" she heard someone say from the door. Not even a moment had passed before large hands had intertwined with hers over her stomach. "Are you in pain?" Castle asked, and she shook her head, but the tears still fell across her cheeks.

"Is she okay?" she pleaded, grasping his hand tight in hers.

"She's okay," he said, and her body relaxed into the mattress. The sleepiness crept back into her bones. "I'm paging the doctor, she'll explain more." There was an edge to his voice, a worry which he didn't want her to pick up on, that kept her from succumbing to the heavy pull of sleep. Their baby was okay now, but what was it the he wasn't telling her?

Grasping hard at consciousness she focused on the lines on Rick's face as they waited for the doctor. Where had he been when they called? What thoughts had rushed through his head? His hair was disheveled, there was a 5 o'clock shadow along his cheeks and jaw, and dark circles around his eyes. Had he been up still, making last minute preparations for Christmas day? Did Alexis and Martha know where he was? Did he wake them up before he left, or did he just leave? How did Alexis take this disruption of Christmas celebrations? Would this sever whatever chance Kate had on a relationship with Alexis?

"Merry Christmas," she said, and squeezed his hand. The smile he offered back was bleak.

"Merry Christmas Kate." He squeezed her hand back.

"It's good to see you awake, Miss Beckett," said a voice from the door. Kate and Rick turned their heads towards the door where Dr. Grant was standing. "You're my last visit before I get off the shift." The smile on the doctor's face was soft and reassuring, but there was something beneath. Kate couldn't trust the smile as genuine, not yet.

"Is she alright?" Kate asked, her hand wrapping across her stomach the best she could.

"Yes, you daughter is doing well now." The doctor stepped into the room. "During surgery you were contracting regularly, and your baby was in distress. But it went away on its own." She paused, and looked over to Rick who was listening with rapt attention. He wasn't family, so this was the first he was able to hear about what was happening beyond "She is fine".

"But?" Rick asked, hanging on the doctor's words.

"At this stage of pregnancy if the contractions were to start up again there would be nothing we can do. The earliest stage we administer medication to stop contractions is at 23 weeks. You are 6 weeks from that stage." The silence that followed lay thick over the room, expanding like a dark cloud above Rick and Kate's heads.

"I don't… I'm having a miscarriage?" No! The voice in her head screamed. It trashed and threw itself against the barriers of her mind. Not her, she couldn't lose her too!

"No you are not, but you are at high risk for one." Dr. Grant looked over at Rick whose face had turned a sinister color. "Which is why I'm putting you on strict bedrest until 23 weeks, when I will do an evaluation to asses the risks." They would no longer be in the care of Dr. Donovan, now they needed someone who specialized in high risk pregnancies. Like hers. "No pressure on your pelvis, which means no sex, no orgasms. You are allowed to walk to the bathroom, stand up for a shower, and walk to the living room and back. And walk to go to doctor's appointments, which will be once a week until 23 weeks."

"No more work?" The doctor shook her head.

"I was also informed that you are living on your own... I would recommend that you have someone close by who can help you with food preparation, and daily assistance, since bed rest will get boring – quickly." Kate winced. The only option she had was her father, and he wouldn't be much support. She guessed that it had been years since her father had ever prepared dinner, and he could barely support himself.

"You can stay with me," Rick said then.

"No, I can't, I don't want to impose—"

"You're not imposing, I'm asking." He smiled at her, that smile which made her heart warm and head go dizzy. "My mother is imposing, you are not." She laughed a tired laugh, feeling the pull of the morphine.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"I should call your dad," he said, voice tentative and low. The fact that she barely spoke of her father, and the little he had heard of him, made it easy for Rick to deduce that the father-daughter relationship was strained.

"Yeah… he should know." Scenarios rushed through her head; her father unable to cope with the news, and drowning himself in the drink; her father rushing to her side, drunk; her father already drunk and not picking up. "How's Espo?" she asked, straying from the topic of her father and the image of a beer can clutched in is sweaty hands. "My partner."

"He came in to check up on you earlier, he was fine and heading home." That was good news, great news. That he was well enough to come to her when she was still under was good. She would have to call him later, but this was enough to settle her now, enough to feel the pull of the morphine again.

After Dr. Grant left, after giving the two of them more in depth information, Rick said he needed to leave too. He'd left Alexis and his mother at the apartment, and they were anxious for his return. He promised to be back later with a change of clothing for her, and her toiletries. When he left she thought back to the days previous where she had avoided him, and she couldn't remember the reason why any more. Alone she had no reason to fight sleep, and the morphine pulled her under.

" _Katie," her mother called, laughter teasing in her voice. "If you don't get down from there we'll be late."_

 _From her vantage point on the tree branch she could see that her mother wasn't eager to leave either._

 _"I like it up here," she said with a shrug, but had to bite her lip to keep a giggle from escaping._

 _"I know you do, but we'll be back here for spring break." Kate sighed, and looked over towards the cabin where they had celebrated Christmas. The Christmas tree had been stripped bare and left to lean against the side of the cabin. She knew the next time they'd see it the needles would be golden._

 _"I don't want to go," she whined._

 _"I know you don't, and that means that we did something right here over the holidays. Remember you didn't even want to come up here!" Her mother's smile was wide, eyes sparkling. "C'mon down, we need to get back to New York for our next adventures."_

 _She hesitated on the branch, thinking about the busy streets in New York, and the early mornings, and soggy cereal. There were also her friends, and her neighbor's dog._

 _"Okay…" she acquiesced, pressing the balls of her feet against the bark of the tree, easing herself down to the ground again._

 _"Get your things and we'll head out." Her mother planted a kiss at the top of her head before Kate ran off again._

The next time she woke it was because of laughter. Someone was draping something over her body. It was soft and warm; which was nice because the room was chilly. As she opened her eyes she was surrounded by bright colored lights that nearly blinded her.

"Merry Christmas!" There was a chorus of voices, one loud and theatrical. Sitting on chairs around her bed were Rick, Martha, and Alexis. Rick and Alexis were wearing ugly Christmas sweaters. The dress Martha wore was the same sleek red as a Christmas ornament.

"What are you doing here?" Kate spluttered, her head looking between them, and the Christmas lights that had been draped over her stomach along with a bright red blanket. It looked ridiculous.

"Since you are stuck in the hospital over Christmas I thought we would take our celebrations here," Alexis said with a shy smile on her face. Rick was hugging the girl into his side, and Kate noticed the furious blush on her cheeks. "It doesn't matter where you are, as long as you are with family." There was something more glimmering in Alexis eyes as she said it, a close to hopeful and expectant look which Kate couldn't quite place. The word family was said with a nudge, and a weight where Kate understood the implicit meaning that she was now a part of a family dynamic of reciprocity. Alexis cared about her, and in that caring she was hoping that Kate wouldn't break their hearts and let both her and her little sister down. But Kate only knew that there was more expected of her, the full meaning of the look and tone was something she was not completely ready to accept. That she would break their hearts was a given to Kate, and if she understood how much Alexis expected her not to, Kate would sabotage everything in fear.

"Well said," Martha praised with a cheer. Rick helped Kate raise the bed so that she was reclining rather than lying flat on her back as Martha handed her a plastic glass. "This is eggnog." The woman paused for a momet, and then changed the plastic glass Kate had been handed to another one. "That was spiked eggnog, this is virgin." Martha gave a theatrical wink.

"Wow, you guys you didn't have to…" Rick clasped his hand over Kate's, and her words faded.

"This is what family does," he said. A lump appeared in her throat. It tasted bittersweet as it grew. It was happiness – she was finally someone who've made an impact, someone who mattered to other people. Gone were the days where she was alone. "Here, we brought presents," Rick continued when he noticed he noticed that she was too choked up to speak.

She was handed a small square package from Alexis.

"I didn't get you any…" Kate said, guilt settling like cement in her stomach.

"You're making the best gift of all, darling." Martha placed a hand over Kate's stomach. Kate managed a slight smile in return, but the guilt didn't abate. "Now open your gift."

She tore off the paper with her right hand, as Alexis explained that it was a gift from her. She'd seen it when she was out Christmas shopping with her dad and thought of her. The lump in her throat grew, feeling wholly inadequate and appreciated at the same time. Alexis didn't hate her for what she'd done to her family, she'd accepted her instead. Kate didn't know what she had done to deserve that, but she wanted to keep on doing it.

Inside the small box was a gold necklace with a pink tourmaline stone. It was smaller than the nail on her pinky, but still managed to catch the reflection of the ornament lights on her body.

"Wow, it's beautiful Alexis," she held it up in front of her to look at it more closely.

"It's your birth stone, and when the baby's born we can add her birth stone to it as well." Alexis spoke in a rushed breath, a blush high on her cheeks which Kate couldn't help but love.

"Thank you." She reached her good hand out to grasp Alexis' squeezing it and hoping that she would understand just how grateful she was for the gift.

"Now this one's from me," Martha said, handing her a thin rectangular present. "Since you'll be stuck in bed for a couple of weeks I figured you'd need something to do with your time." Inside the package was a DVD with 4 Broadway plays on it.

"Thank you Martha, I love it." She flipped it over and read on the back of it what plays it had on it.

They stayed for nearly an hour, Rick informing her that his gift wasn't ready yet, but would be soon. It left her feeling uneasy – the gifts she had received were thoughtful, inspired, and she didn't have anything for them. It wasn't even possible for her to get anything. She was tied to a bed until the beginning of February.

When the hour was up, they left reluctantly, Rick carrying the still lit Christmas lights in his arm, looking like she imagined a – sullen – human Christmas tree would look like.

Later that night as she listened to the sirens of police cars and ambulances she thought of Rick. It was hard to forget his smile, and to stop her own smile from expanding on her face as she thought about him. The way he had wrapped his arm around Alexis with his eyes twinkling with happiness and love, it had grabbed at her heart and squeezed it. A new yearning had started to build inside of her, not the yearning to flee from him, nor the yearning for a life that wasn't hers. It was a yearning for more of what she had. More of him.

Inside of her she could feel the tickle of movements that signaled her baby girl's presence. In all the chaos, with everything that had happened, she hadn't felt her move until then. A tear escaped her eyes as air flooded into her lungs. Relief.

"Stay with me baby, stay with me," she whispered, brushing her thumb over the small bump. "Please don't leave me."

* * *

If you're curious of my social media accounts where I sometimes talk about writing you can find me:

 **Twitter** : sinisterkid92  
 **Tumblr** : redkiera

And as said above **inkorrekteskonzept** is the beta to this story, and you can find her tumblr under that name :)


	11. Chapter 11

This has been a long wait for. I'm aware, painfully so. Between last chapter and now I've had to get a new computer, I started back up with school again, and I've managed to tick off one uni course. Woo! Anyway, I took it to a vote on twitter, two people participated, where I decided to go ahead and publish this chapter now, and the next chapter will come up the next time I say "screw it" to planning. I'm trying to get ahead so that when I publish it will be more consistent and frequent. Alas, I have 0 patience, I don't like to wait for anything, or sit on anything for any length of time. So.

But, voting for all new and old readers (and those who have no idea when they started subscribing to this story, and don't know what it is):  
 **Do you prefer:**

a) I publish as I write - this can mean sometimes two chapters in a short amount of time, or no chapter for 1-2 month  
b) write ahead a few chapters, then start publishing again  
c) finish the story before I publish any more

Tell me your opinion via review and I'll decide from there! Cheers!

* * *

I know who I am when I'm alone  
I'm something else when I see you  
You don't understand, you should never know  
How easy you are to need

 **IT WILL COME BACK - HOIZER**

CHAPTER 11 – Night Light

The air was choking her. Darkness and shadows crowded her vision. Fragments of panic shattered her, and her arm was on fire. She swore she could hear breathing from the corner of the room, and glimmers of a gun raced past her eyes. This was it. She was going to die. Her heart was pounding in her chest, adrenaline kicking her into gear.

Something shattered as she rolled off of the bed. The broken glass that cut into her hand and her knees went unnoticed by her. Breathing was nearly impossible. She couldn't _see_ him, but she knew he was there. _Get down!_ Echoed in her head, the ringing in her ears as a gun went off, and she couldn't help the scream that left her mouth.

That's when she felt the hands on her. Fingers that reached for her face. Gentle and light fingers that trembled slightly as they brushed her hair away from her face. Repetitive motions that didn't fit the panic inside of her.

"Kate." The voice was soft, a mere murmur that was next to inaudible above the pounding of her heart. "Kate," the voice repeated a few more times, coaxing her out of the corner she had backed herself into. Blue eyes were looking down at her, her head held up by the palms of his hands. "You're bleeding."

Arms wrapped around her and pulled her up. He cradled her into his body, and carried her out of her bedroom and into the bathroom out in the hallway. The cuts weren't deep, but he could see small chards of glass. He held her to him like he would hold Alexis when she was younger, settling her on his lap with one arm wrapped around her, while the other cleaned her wounds.

"You want to talk about it?" he asked, brushing his thumb against the hot skin of her waist. He could feel the heat of her like a furnace against his body. The light sheen of sweat was drying, but she was still shivering in his lap.

"No," she answered, grabbing his shirt as he poured peroxide over the wound on her knee. "You're getting good at this."

"I must have been a doctor in a previous lifetime," he quipped, bandaging the knee before cleaning her right hand.

"Maybe." She watched him as he tended to her wounds, the tension in her body seeping out of her, draining her energy.

"How's the baby?" He put a band aid over the heel of her hand, but even after he finished he didn't let go of it, holding it in his.

"Good, no contractions," she mumbled into his chest. Since getting back from the hospital two weeks before, just two days before New Year's, Kate had been feeling her move more each day. From the tickle of butterfly wings to the flutters of a fish, the stronger they got the more reassured both of them were. Their baby was growing, despite what happened they were both okay. On the surface.

"Arm?" The surgery scar had healed well, and they were due to have them checked out tomorrow to be given an okay on the healing process. It was still useless to her, the nerves in her arms had been damaged by the bullet, and would take time to heal. The goal was to achieve basic strength in her arm before birth. Being a new mother and hindered in her ability to hold her infant was a fear that kept her up almost as much as the fear of what happened.

"Sore," she admitted. When she fell she had attempted to reach out with it, but even in her panic she had understood that it would serve no purpose for her. The jerky movements had jostled it enough to remind her that almost three weeks ago she'd been shot. "Can't have any more medicine for it, though, I've already taken one and I'm weaning off them."

"I know." He was patient despite the dark circles that were visible underneath his eyes. She wondered if he slept, or if he waited for this to happen every night.

"You don't have to come every time this happens," she rushed to say. He'd already been inconvenienced by her staying with them, and that was enough hospitality and kindness to go for a long time. This was too much. She couldn't take this much when she was unable to give back.

"I want to," he said. It wasn't what she expected him to say. She knew he was a kind man, a wonderful man who had given her far more than she had ever thought to wish for. Yet she was still was caught off guard by his genuine kindness. Kindness for him wasn't about status, it wasn't from a sense of duty. He wanted to help her. He wanted to. Why? She couldn't understand him. She used to pride herself in being able to assess people without much difficulty, but he wasn't at all what she expected a person to be.

"You need to sleep." His arms were still wrapped around her, and as she called him out on his sleeplessness his eyes closed. She yearned to reach up and touch his face, to feel the stubble beneath the pads of her fingertips, and slip her fingers through his hair. When his eyes were closed she was given her first opportunity to watch him. There was a slight softness to his features, something she recognized in many men around the age 40. A fatherly warmth which made her want to wrap her arms around him. There were soft lines on his cheeks, she suspected they had been there for most of his life, telling tales of laughter and happiness. He had lived a life of smiles, and now she had disrupted that.

"You need sleep as well," he murmured, not opening his eyes.

"This isn't that comfortable, Rick," she whispered back. While his arms felt safe, she felt as if she was about to fall off of his lap. He hummed in reply, staying still for another few seconds before he opened his eyes and moved to stand up. "I can walk back to bed." He looked as if he was about to protest, but the look she gave him forced him to acquiesce.

When she settled back in bed he put the night stand she had knocked over back where it belonged. There was a gentleness in how he put the things back, each thing to its designated spot. The glass shimmered on the floor, reflecting the subdued light from the small lamp on the nightstand. With a carefulness as to not cut himself he picked the shards up and wrapped them in paper. In the morning they would have to sweep the floors, it wasn't something that they could do at 2am in the morning.

As she watched him she could feel something build in her stomach. A knot wound tighter with each passing second as she thought of the darkness she would be left in, alone, once he was done. Ideas muddled together in her head on how to get him to stay longer, but the sleepiness in his eyes kept her from acting on those ideas. He needed rest, but was too kind to allow himself that.

"I don't want to," she started, halting over the ledge she was about to throw herself off of, "be alone." Naked, bare, vulnerable. She trusted him enough to throw herself off of the ledge, but there was no way of knowing if he would catch her before she hit rock bottom. The confession was unexpected to him. The months they had known each other he had accepted that there were layers of her he would never get to know. She was guarded, protective of herself, and every reveal was heavy and fearsome. He knew she was scared to let herself open up. That if she opened a door she would be met by swords and arrows.

"Do you want me to stay?" The question may have been seen as unnecessary by outsiders, but there was little he took for granted when it came to the guarded woman that slept in his house. She nodded. Her teeth sank into her bottom lip when the mattress sank down under his body weight. He turned his body so that he was facing her, as if he was waiting on her permission to take a breath. The smile she offered was the only sign he needed.

"She doesn't have a name," Kate blurted out then. The weight of his gaze had her antsy, it tickled underneath her skin and begged her to reach out and kiss his cheek. Most of all she wanted to hug his body to hers and let him sleep. But he wouldn't close his eyes.

"Have you thought of any yet?" She shook her head, but it was a lie. She had thought of so many names that she couldn't remember the ones she liked anymore. "Do you like traditional, modern, or hyper-modern names?"

"What category does the name Alexis fit into?"

"Definitely modern," he said. "It's the name of a few saints, though."

"I like that name." She itched to shift closer to his body and be pressed against him like she had been in the bathroom. Before him she hadn't been much of a cuddler, but now she wanted to press up against him and hear his heart beating. Or have his head against her chest so that she could run her hands through his hair. "How did you decide on that?"

"She's actually named after me," he admitted. "It's a family name, my grandfather was called Alexander as well."

"Your middle name is Alexander?" It was a nice name, with a nice ring to it.

"It _was_ Alexander. I changed my name before I published my first book. I was born Richard Alexander Rodgers, but I changed my name to Richard Edgar Castle."

"I thought Castle was your father's surname," she admitted, tucking her hand underneath her chin as she lay on her side. They were lying on their own pillows, but she tried to estimate the inches that separated them — five she guessed. Five small inches between her lips and his lips.

"Actually I never knew my father, neither did my mother beyond the one night they met, fell in love, and made me." The lack of wistfulness in his voice was strange to her ears. There was a depth to it that spoke of fairytale dreams rather than absence. Her respect for Martha expanded – she had raised a wonderful boy on her own. Whatever she had done it had been right, and that was what she wanted for their daughter as well.

"That must have been tough." They had moved closer, closing the gap between their warm bodies. It was unconscious, bodies moving autonomously without their conscious mind's consent. When he answered her statement she felt the warmth of his breath against her cheek; intimate as if he would only share this with her.

"Mother always had big dreams, and she fought hard for them. We got by alright, but it wasn't always easy to _achieve_." He winked, and smoothed over the seriousness of what he was talking about. The way he shied away from exposing himself felt familiar. It was with a smile that was tethered to a thin branch of surface happiness, hanging over a canyon. Unable to resist the urge to touch the hair at his temple, she brushed it with two fingers – a feather light touch which caused his eyes to twinkle. She abruptly pulled away.

"And now you take care of her." The string that had been pulling them together started to slack as she pulled away. Sobering with the knowledge that she was nowhere near to take that step towards him, towards anything with him. Beyond the night they spent together he hadn't shown any indication that he felt for her _that way._ That way which she knew she was starting to feel about him. Like he wasn't just a man with substance, but also _the real deal,_ and someone who she would dare to dive into it with. That was unlike any feeling she had for anyone before. Maybe it was the hormones, the maternal instinct to have a partner to help her with her child. Yet, it felt like more than that. It felt like it was the one true thing in her life.

"Don't tell her that," he said, shifting his weight away from her as well as he too was released from the hold between the two of them.

"I won't," Kate teased, making him narrow his eyes in suspicion.

"Your words say one thing, but your tone…" He trailed off, shaking his head. "All the woman in my life conspire against me." He slid down the bed so that his face was level with her stomach. "But you won't, you'll be on my side right?" He put his hands on both sides of her belly, awaiting a nudge in confirmation, but receiving nothing.

"Not doing as you say?" she asked, smirking at his mock disappointed face.

"Well it was a bit much to ask I think, I haven't felt her kick yet." He laid his head back on the pillow, but one of his hands stayed on her stomach. It was both intimate and natural for the two of them. The past two weeks this had become a routine during daytime. When he took a break from writing he would join her on the couch in the living room. With her legs across his lap he would rest one hand on her stomach in the hope of feeling a kick. It was unlikely that he would feel it now, she would tell him, but he kept coming to the couch whenever he was able to.

"Soon," she reminded him, like she always did when there were no nudges.

"What is your middle name?" he asked after a while of silence, pulling her back into the conversation about names.

"Houghton. It was my mother's maiden name." When she told him about her mother before Christmas she had expected him to start treating her differently. Death had a way of making those left behind stink of grief, especially the people who were like her; damaged beyond repair by it. It was a repellent she had always relied upon to shield herself from inevitable heartache. People who got to close would uncloak the horror of it, and beyond that point start walking on egg shells, and eventually fade from her life. Rick, for some inexplicable reason, didn't seem scared of it.

"They didn't like hyphened names?"

"They were already married when they had me, she was a Beckett then." When she was a young girl she had asked her mother about her middle name, because it wasn't Charlotte or Margret like most girls in her grade. It was a solid masculine name which didn't seem much like a name to her at the time. With the story of the origin of her name, the history it bore, along with it came pride. To Beckett her mother was everything Kate wanted to be, and to carry her name was an honor. After she died it was a weight.

"You never told me what your mother's name was." He knew her father. The day after Christmas her father had shown up, the Christmas booze still fragrant. How the call hadn't made him kill himself with the drink she wouldn't know. Maybe the distance had severed enough between them to lessen the impact she had on him. When he stood in the doorway and introduced himself as Jim Beckett Rick moved around her father with a stiff back and eyes that flickered between her and her father rapidly.

After her father had fallen asleep on the chair next to her Rick had clasped her hand in silence. With a blink of his eyes he had said he understood why a grieving 19 year old would run. It would never be a decision she would stop regretting or stop feeling guilty about. But his understanding meant more to her than she would ever be able to put into words.

"Johanna," she said. Johanna, Johanna, Johanna. The name bounced in her head, striking every painful chord it could find. It was a name she hadn't said in years. Johanna. Johanna. a. "We're not naming her that."

"It's a nice name," he injected, a half-protest half-question about her refusal of the name.

"No child should have to carry that sort of baggage, they're innocent and new." The edge that slipped into her voice was familiar. Sharp edges and thorns kept people from the painful parts of her mind. If no one went inside then no one could pull anything out.

"Not all baggage isn't heavy, Kate, and all memories aren't bad." His hand reached for her hand and squeezed it, forcing her to stay where she was and not pull away. There was nowhere she could go, anyway.

"I don't want to talk about this, Rick."

"Okay, we can talk about something else then." He backed off, quickly rewinding to a safe place.

"I want to sleep," she said, feeling the heaviness of her body, and seeing it in his as well. They couldn't afford to lose more sleep than they already had, and she didn't want to lose more sleep over her mother than she had lost in the past decade. She wanted to tell him that it was January 6th last week, and her mother had been gone for so long that she couldn't recall her face anymore. But January 6th didn't feel much different from other days, it just felt heavier. More of the same things. She couldn't outrun that date, it seeped into her marrow long before it came around. Weeks she would anticipate it, and only afterwards could she understand why she had been worse than usual.

Her fear of this baby, about the future, before Christmas had been her mother's ghost haunting her. Memories latching onto her subconscious and tainting everything it could reach. She had a year to get out of its clutches, a year before it would all happen again.

"Okay, we'll sleep." In silence he pulled the covers up around them both, a bit hesitant as if he was waiting for her to kick him out. Despite his unwelcome prodding she still wanted him there in the night when she was defenseless against the memories. Esposito had called her after Christmas to check up on her. He had managed to get out uninjured, just shaken up enough to get a couple of days off of work and an hour of counseling. The cop she was with, Officer Kent, wasn't as lucky as the two of them. The day after Christmas they pulled the plug. Someone had told her that he had two teenage sons. She kept thinking about those two boys. She knew what it was like to lose a parent. Whatever they were going through she hoped that they would be spared the life she'd had after her mother died.

In the darkness she could hear Rick's breathing even out into snores. The hand he had untangled from her as he settled in to sleep was resting on his chest, rising with every breath he took. When he slept she could reach for it and hold it in hers, and whisper into it a near inaudible thank you.

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 _Hope you enjoyed this chapter! You can find me on social media:_

 **Twitter:** Sinisterkid92  
 **Tumblr:** RedKiera


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: This will probably be the last update of the year. Next week my twin goes in for brain surgery, and I'm busy with school, family, health issues, and moving in February, so! Lots and lots on my mind. Trying to be at least semi-regular with updates. Gunning for once a month, right now. Hope you enjoy this chapter, it's going to take you towards the next part of this story! :)

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 **Chapter 12 - Weeks**

 _The dawn is breaking_  
 _A light shining through_  
 _You're barely waking_  
 _And I'm tangled up in you_

 **Howie Day - Collide**

It became a routine. Each night he would end up in her room, and each night they would inch closer towards the line that they had drawn between them months ago. In the beginning it was tense, both of them putting on a charade of asking to stay. Next to each other there was a peace which allowed them to sleep deep, getting enough rest for the first time in ages. Kate had never liked sharing a bed with anyone, sleep would be restless and light as her body kept her on high alert. Yet with him she could relax.

After a while they didn't ask anymore. He slipped under her covers at night, and held her to him in silence. They rarely spoke during their nighttime routine. Occasionally they would comment on the day, but ever since she shut him down the last time they spoke about something heavier he shied clear of it. They slept well, even though Rick would slip away in the early morning hours. Neither of them were ready to reveal what they were doing to Alexis and Martha. It was something they wanted to keep for themselves for a while. Neither knew what it was, and neither wanted to be forced to explain it. Rick's phone would buzz at 5am, and he would help her to the bathroom and back. Then he'd slip off to his own bedroom before anyone became any wiser.

During the day they both pretended that they didn't sleep with their arms wrapped around each other. Continuing with the complicated platonic charade that had started months ago. Alexis had in the beginning been awkward around Kate, slowly taking to Kate. Rick told her one night, when the darkness had grown weary around them, about how Gina had been like a mother to Alexis. But ever since their divorce she had kept away. A part of him was relieved that Gina wouldn't encroach on the time he got with his daughter. But he confessed that he felt guilty about it. Guilt over that he couldn't give Alexis a mother, and guilt over that he didn't let Gina in more. Though she had always been busy, he defended himself. There had always been something happening, somewhere to go, problems to solve. She was only there for the good parts.

Two weeks after their sleep routine started, she would encourage him to talk. Most of the time it was about his writing and the research he had conducted that day for a scene. Though she was a spectator on the couch for most of his antics, she enjoyed hearing the story behind what she had seen during the day. She giggled when he explained his train of thought behind having his daughter duct tape him to a chair, biting her fist to keep from being too loud. He found himself craving her laugh. He would climb into bed next to her each night with the mission of making her at least smile wide. He would exaggerate stories just to see the pull of her lips and flash of white teeth. It made her inch even closer to him every night until she slept draped over him. When their eyes grew heavy the baby would start to kick. It was now hard enough for him to feel against the press of his finger tips. A determinate nudge that made him nostalgic about mid twenties and with Meredith's belly stretched and swollen in bed during the indian summer heat. There was a rueful thankfulness that this time there wasn't naivety of the future.

Kate did her best with Alexis. Feeling wholly and inadequate and unequipped to deal with a 16 year old girl whose eyes where fired up with equal amounts of hope and distrust, she did what she could. From Kate's couch — dubbed so by Alexis and Rick after she had claimed it every morning for weeks — she became privy to the things Alexis shied away from telling her father. Boy trouble, friend drama, Kate had enough of that as a teenager herself to be able to give advice. With enough heartbreak stories in her life it was territory in which Kate felt comfortable helping with .

It was tentative. Everything about her life in their loft was tentative. A routine of sorts developed. Kate ate breakfast reclined on the couch watching Alexis and Rick as they shared plans for the day. Then the quick kiss to Alexis forehead as she headed out of the loft. Martha and Alexis both warned her about Smorlettes, but there was something enticing about the sound of the mix of savory and sweet. That was how she learnt the hard lesson of listening to the two women's advice. While Rick had a never ending bucket filled with ideas, it didn't mean that all of them were _good ideas._

"You can't plant fingerprints at a crime scene _after_ the victim's dead Rick!" She had exclaimed once in his tirade about a scene he was writing.

"Crime shows do it all the time," he said and shrugged, earning an eye-roll from Kate.

"I thought you were looking for _authentic_ Rick." Just a few minutes earlier he had stressed the importance of authenticity in writing. He had given her a long, suspicious, look as she called him out. Then he had turned around and headed towards his desk, grumbling as his own research showed the same results she had found years before.

Most parts of being around him, with him, were easy. He recognized limits faster than anyone had before him. The ease of talking with him was unprecedented. Because he could perceive the stops before any of them came close to crossing them. So when Alexis and Martha went away during the weekend and he offered his bed for them to sleep in, there was no reason for her to object.

When morning came in his bedroom after a night which hadn't been any more eventful than the preceding ones, she was awoken by the soft glow of light. From the clock on his bedside table she saw that it was not even 8am. 20 weeks ago she had woken up in the same bed, but then everything was different. The fear and emptiness that followed her around was now starting to disperse. It was shrinking from the impossible weight to something that was becoming manageable. The soft snoring from Rick as he lay sleeping on his back, her draped above him lulled her back into a restful sleep.

Of all the things she wanted to be, she wanted to be whole most of all. The weight was easier to carry, and some of the shattered pieces of her heart in her ribcage were starting to mend together. The glue was still drying, and it was a painstaking task to find what pieces fit together. Some had been obliterated completely, leaving dark holes. Whole was a dream she both put her whole being into hoping it would become true, while she simultaneously didn't believe in at all. She felt like a child shouting _I do believe in faries, I do_ at a movie screen just to save Tinker bell. She knew as well as most children that words don't mean anything on their own. Even as a four year old Kate had thought it was silly, but now it was comforting to have a mantra. Despite not fully believing in what she was saying . _I can heal, I can heal, I can be better._ If she said it often enough it might end up becoming truth.

Rick woke her with a tray of food two hours later. He settled it over her thighs as he crawled back into bed again. His freezing toes nudging her calves sent a shiver up her body.

"You're freezing," she said, pulling the covers up higher above her. On the tray there was a stack of chocolate pancakes drizzled with syrup, a cup of coffee — by now she knew it was decaf — an already pealed orange, and her prenatal vitamins neatly placed next to a tall glass of water. Just how she liked it. "I don't fit into my clothes anymore, thanks to you feeding me this." She swept her hand over the tray, smiling.

"I can't take the whole blame," Rick said, pulling himself closer towards her so that his hand could rest on top of her stomach. "She's got some of the blame as well."

"The two of you are conspiring together, I see." She took a bite of the pancakes, smirking at him as she chewed. He only smiled as a reply, watching her with eyes that seemed darker somehow, vast and filled with something more than liking. There was a yearning in them. She had seen it grow for the past weeks. From a slow kindling flame to this visible fire behind his eyes that sucked the oxygen out of the air between them.

"I'm 23 weeks tomorrow," she said then, disrupting the pull of something which she knew neither of them were ready for. Not like this, not while their daughter's life was still hanging in the balance. Research she had done had shown that while they would stop premature labor at this point, there was still another week until her daughter would recieve medical intervention. Each week was too long, and at the same time too quick. The pregnancy seemed to be dragging by, and each time she worried her daughter wasn't moving it sent panic coursing through her veins.

"Finally," he muttered, his hand rubbing against her stomach. "Are they doing an ultrasound as well?" She wanted to squirm against him when his thumb rubbed circles. It tingled in her whole body as she remembered how his hands felt on her, how he felt inside of her, all of those months ago. It had been too long, and she felt like she needed _something._ But could she go there with him? Could she push the limits of this fragile relationship when there was so much on the line?

"Yeah, to make sure the stress of everything hasn't affected her developmen." At their previous appointment the week before with Dr. Grant she had brought up the complications that she could face in her pregnancy after what has happened. It was pertinent that she keep the stressors at a minimum, and relax the best she could. It was easier said than done.

"We should ask for pictures." He sat up in bed next to her, rubbing his face. "After Monday I think it's time for us, or me, to announce this." His hand was on her stomach again. It was odd how much time he spent touching her, considering they weren't even together.

"Hm?" She tried not to reveal the sudden surge of panic in her chest. Up until now this pregnancy had been a fairly private thing, with only a handful of people knowing of it. When she got shot she had up until then only told the people who needed to know. There was no reason to tell other people because she wasn't showing. Now there was a clearly visible bump, and a due date only 17 weeks away. If she even made it to her due date. "How are you going to announce it?" Her voice was a bit too shaky to hide the fact that she wasn't as cool about it as she wanted to appear.

"I'll put up an announcement on my webpage, twitter… facebook, saying that I'm expecting my second daughter this spring," he said with a shrug, fingers tripping nervously along her stomach. "I'm not going to say anything about you, unless you want me to. I have kept Alexis away from the public her whole life, and I intend to do the same with our child."

She nodded her head. Relieved of the simplicity and brief explanation he was intending to give. That she would not be mentioned by name, that the nature of their non-relationship wouldn't be explored. He was becoming a father again, only he would remain in the lime-light, giving just enough to sate people's inquisitive need without selling everything to them. She would remain Kate Beckett, private person, probably an EMT. She wasn't sure if she wanted to go back after giving birth. Not anymore.

"I'll let you read the announcement before I put it up. If there's anything you'll want changed I will change it." His smile was assuring, and warm, and was everything that made her want to kiss him.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Now eat up your pancakes before they go cold and yucky," he demanded. "Then we're going to order new clothes for you and the baby."

"I swear you have more femininity in you than I have in my pinky," she laughed, but followed his demand by shoving her mouth full with pancakes. His eyes trailed down her body, halting at her chest for a few seconds.

"No, I think you've got more of that than me."

"Shuddup," she said, mouth still full of pancakes. Despite herself her cheeks ached from the large grin on her face.

That weekend, the Saturday spanning into a lazy Sunday, was spent in a quiet sort of bliss that spread warmth to places inside of her body that used to be locked up. He sat next to her on the couch with a flushed face as he huffed over the wording in the announcement he was writing. The way he approached it with the prudence in keeping what was private private, while simultaneously appearing to be open, was about as simple as walking a hair thin line. He bounced words off of her: should he use _pregnant_ or _expecting_ , and was it enough to say _late spring,_ when late May easily could bleed into early summer? At what point did summer start?

"Should I say something about… the scare?" he asked her late on Saturday. The laptop was one of the few things illuminating the room, beyond the TV she had switched on. Moulin Rouge was playing at a low volume, the sound just high enough to reach her ears.

"Ask me after the appointment on Monday." Under the palm of her hand the baby was moving, a limb pressing up against her. She didn't want to have been lulled into a false sense of security. Despite all appointments going well up until now, and with no further contractions, there was still that other shoe she was waiting for to drop.

"It will be okay, Kate, she's going to be fine." He sat the laptop on the coffee table, moving himself down on the floor so that he was sitting by her head that she was resting on the arm of the couch. "You will be okay," he murmured as he brushed hair that had fallen out of her ponytail away from her face. His thumb brushed against her temple, and without thinking, without any form of coherent thought forming in her head, she leaned her head against his forehead and closed her eyes. He was perfect.

"I don't know what I'll do if she isn't." His hand joined hers on top of her stomach, smiling as the heel of his hand was poked by his daughter.

"She's moving, she's growing, and you have done everything the way you are supposed to. There's nothing you can do today that will change anything, so…" He pulled her up to a sitting position, and then sat down on the couch behind her back, reclining her so that her head rested on his legs. "Now we should watch the movie, because Christian is about to serenade Satine."

"How many times have you watched this movie, Rick?" she asked, a giggle not far away in her voice.

"Sch, this is a cinematic masterpiece." On the TV she watched Christian trying to convince Satine to love him, moving across the elephant as Satine's arguments against love started to fall apart. Kate had never argued against love like Satine, but like Satine she could feel herself thawing for a man.

Sunday was spent lying around in bed until past noon. He finished the first draft of the announcement, and then spent the rest of the day buried in a name book.

"What about Ella?" he suggested when he brought her lunch. She adjusted the tray on her lap, and looked at him questioningly.

"As a nickname, or as a name?"

"As a name, or a nickname?" He didn't seem that sure of himself, looking back at the table where the baby name book was lying open. "What do you think?"

"I don't hate it, but I don't love it either?" It was a nice name, a pretty name, but she couldn't picture herself having a child named Ella, or a variant of it either.

"Lillian, Carolyn, Elsie, Iris, or Willow?" He asked a little while later, pausing for a second to look down at a piece of paper he had in his hand. "Or Marlowe?"

"They're nice," she said, holding her hand out for the paper. "I like Carolyn, Willow, and Marlowe…" He had suggested so many names by that point that she felt like she had to say she liked some names, even when she was reluctant to concede that she did. They were all nice names, he had good taste, yet they never felt like her daughter's name. She couldn't imagine calling out for Harper, or Zelda for that matter either.

"Please not Carolyn," he immediately said. "I only wrote it down because you said no to everything…" he admitted when she furrowed her eyebrows.

"I'm sorry, I'm terrible at this." She couldn't help herself pouting, and neither could she stop the tears from welling up in her eyes. Of all the things she would be tasked with as a mother, and she couldn't even give her daughter a name! "I just want her to have a name that is… I want her to have a name that is more than just a name in a baby book!"

"A name with a meaning?" Rick asked, flipping through the book again. "Mikaela means gift from god." He flipped through the book to a random page, scanning it quickly. "Abigail means… brings joy, and oh… not Paige, that means assistant." He cringed. "Not that there's anything wrong with being an assistant, but that's not something to name a child after."

"Now that I know the meaning of them I like those names better." She smiled at him from across the couch, taking a bite out of the pancakes she had craved all afternoon.

"Did you know that Richard means brave power?" His eyebrows waggled as he flipped through the book, landing on a page with a triumphant aha! "Katherine… pure and clear." A wave of something dark washed over her for a moment, a desire for purity, to be translucent and open. She waved it off, but it lingered in her chest like an uncomfortable weight.

"Huh," Kate said, focusing more intently on the food in front of her. "Don't you want to name her after some literary giant or author? Like Alexis Harper Castle?"

"Maybe Hester?" Kate wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Or Hermione?"

"Be serious Rick." If he sat closer to her she would've slapped his arm for goofing off again.

"Hermione is a _great_ character to name a child after, she's strong, and she's vulnerable, and she's human, and smart… everything you hope your child will strive to be."

"Well, I haven't read Harry Potter, and I'm not naming my child after a character I know pretty much nothing about," she said, and watch his face fall in horror.

"You haven't read Harry Potter?" She shook her head, eyebrows furrowing and not quite understanding why he seemed so horrified. "How can you _not_ have read one of the greatest books in modern time? It's a part of modern history!"

"I haven't read _anything_ reallyin a long time Rick," she said huffing. A slight redness crept along her neck and cheeks — she didn't like admitting this to people. She had loved books before, lost sleep chasing the last pages of adventures and other lives. It lost its appeal after her mother died, when time with herself was too much time spent thinking, and she could never concentrate long enough to finish a book.

"What was the last book you read?" he questioned, the name-book in his lap forgotten.

"It's ah… I don't remember." The memory of his book in her childhood home's bookcase. _Flowers for your grave._ She had tried to read since that book, there had been so many books that had fallen down over her lap as tears sprang to her eyes instead of her getting lost in the story. After a while she no longer longed for the books, didn't feel the yearning or the itching in her fingertips. Books were a failure, and a mountain she never saw herself climbing again. She missed wanting to read, missed the rush a good story gave her. But she didn't want to have to think too deeply. That would get her into trouble. The baby girl in her stomach was the result of too much thinking, and while it ended up being a good thing, it was a testament to how unequipped she was with those emotions.

"You should read Harry Potter, it's a good series," he said. "Or you could read my books, or _finish_ reading my books," he said pointedly, referring to one of their first conversations.

"Maybe, Mr. Castle." She smiled at him. "But, what does Willow mean?" She purposely changed the subject, steering him into safer territories before he hit a limit. There had been too many limits, and she didn't want him to meet anymore. She didn't want to disappoint him. She wanted to be pure and clear.

Monday came with excited trepidation. It was the day that could finally give their worries a rest for a while. The past 6 weeks had been uneventful: there had been no more contractions, the baby moved as she should, and Kate's arm healed well without any infections. Everything seemed fine, but they didn't want to be lulled into a false sense of security. Neither of them were doctors, all they could do was wait and see.

The appointment was simple, and she sat on the edge of the examination table, her left leg shaking as the doctor began the exam. Everything was alright with Kate, as far as the pregnancy was concerned. And their baby girl squirmed in her stomach underneath the noise of the ultrasound, pushing up against it in annoyance. The stress hadn't affected her growth at all, and while she still had months until she was ready to be born, Kate and their baby girl were doing well enough as any other mother to be at 23 weeks.

With the ultrasound picture in her hand her body started to shake. The picture was black and white with a grainy background, but her baby had the most gorgeous profile Kate had ever seen. There was a painful, happy, twinge at her heart as her love for this girl expanded it further.

"Hey, are you alright?" Rick asked, wrapping an arm around her. At his question she touched her hand to her cheek, feeling the tears falling freely down her face. She hadn't cried since she decided to stay pregnant, and now she was crying for getting to keep her.

"Yeah, I'm more than alright." She sniffed as she wiped her tears, looking up at him smiling. His eyes were also brimmed with tears when he met hers, and he let out shaky laugh as his eyes roamed over your face.

That moment she felt something in her heart that she hadn't felt in a long time; not just a longing for him, but a desire and need. A need to exist, to change her life and be happy. She touched his cheek, her thumb stroking his stubbled cheek. His smile paused, stalling while he waited for her to move, to do something.

She stretched her neck up towards him, tilting her head to press her lips against his. Softer than she remembered, more home than before. She smiled against his lips, and kissed him again.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/n:** Hiya everyone! It wasn't yesterday I last updated. The past almost 3 months have been keeping me busy. With my sister's surgery and the complications that came with that, school, moving and other things... I took a break from writing for a while. First half of this story was written in early november, the rest was written last night. I'm posting this without a lot of editing to just get into it again and past this chapter. It's short but... This chapter has been kicking my butt, and I needed it written and done with to get to the next part of the story. At this moment I have about 5-7 more chapters planned for this story, but a lot more to tell you.

Hope you like this new chapter!

* * *

 **Chapter 13 - Happiness… or something**

 _It was easy when you were younger,_

 _you can put it back together,_

 _it was there if you ever wanted it,_

 _but you closed the door and said goodbye for good_

 **EZ- Pete Yorn**

 **Baby Girl Castle: Coming Summer 2010**

 _The fantastic thing about life is that it's never boring. When you think you have figured it out and you have become comfortable, it surprises you. Though my wonderful mother has always kept me on my toes, and my incredible daughter Alexis keeps me in awe of life: I am thrilled to announce a surprise that has been baking for a few months now! This summer I am becoming a father to a second daughter, and I can't wait to begin on this journey once again. It has been a while since Alexis was a baby, but I'm certain I remember the most important parts. The diaper goes on the bum, right?_

 _I want to thank you for your support of my books, and that you have all made the dream of mine possible. The baby's mother and I want to extend our gratitude, and wish that we will be given the privacy and respect that any parent-to-be desire in this incredible and intimate experience._

 _Until next time I wish you all well,_

 _Richard Castle_

—

"Can you stop?" She clamped her mouth shut, trying not to laugh at him while he was talking in a high pitched voice behind a teddy koala.

"Don't leave me here!" he continued in the same voice, moving the koala's arms into a praying pose.

"Fine, we'll get the koala!" She grabbed it from him and put it in the shopping cart she had been leaning against.

"His name is Earl, not _the koala_ ," he said, making citation marks with his hands.

"So he's a boy?" She raised an eyebrow. He fell into step beside her as they walked down the isle in the baby supply store. Up ahead she could see a row of strollers, and to her right there was a sea of children's clothes from newborn up to age 3.

"Fair question, but yes he's a boy." She turned the cart as they reached the section for baby furniture. The day before the two of them had come face to face with the half-finished nursery at his place. All that it had was walls only partially painted, and with only one piece of furniture in it. The rocking chair was lovely, and she was certain that it would come to good use, but it wasn't enough for a baby. It had been easy to decide on the plans for the following day. Which was how they ended up here just minutes after the store opened for the day.

"Dark wood, light wood, white wood?" he asked, walking ahead to test the stability of the cribs by shaking the frame. When one shook too easily, he grunted in disproval. "Not this one, because if this baby is anything like Alexis, she'll be shaking bars before she even knows how to sit."

"Was she a handful?" Kate asked, running a hand along the smooth dark wood of a crib with a built-in changing table.

"She was stubborn, and independent," he said. "And she _hated_ sleeping in the crib, so she was in her big-girl bed when she was only a year old. We had to share a room with her until she was old enough to be trusted to sleep in a big girl bed on her own." His smile was nostalgic, lost in old memories with a smile pulling at his lips.

"Will she she sleeping in her own room?" Kate asked, her hand resting on top of her stomach. "Because I don't think I'd be able to leave her like that…" The thought of not having her baby close to her at night was enough to tighten her throat. Too much spare time had resulted in too much time spent on messaging boards, which meant that she had come across too many horror stories. SIDS has turned from an exaggerated threat to an inevitable consequence of not spending every second looking at her baby.

"She can sleep with us, we'll put up a bassinet or something next to the bed." His hand squeezed hers, then he splayed it over her stomach. "I think you've popped for real now." She tilted her head down to look at her stomach, now looking less like a bad case of indigestion and more like she was unquestionably pregnant.

"Yeah," she smoothed a hand over it, uncomfortable under his watchful gaze. "What about the white one, over there?" The crib was a pristine white color with a sturdy frame and drawers underneath. The bed was made with soft pink bedding that made her heart squeeze in longing to meet her own baby.

Ever since she kissed him a month before they had found a new level of familiarity in each other. It hadn't evolved beyond slow unassuming kisses yet, and for that she was thankful. Though she was up for breath now, it felt like the darkness which she now was familiar with was luring around every corner.

Unlike previous times when she managed to pull herself up and tried to get back on path in life she had a greater motivation to stay afloat now. The darkness couldn't lure her back in with the same ease it would've had a year ago. Rick, without knowing it, was the person on the boat cheering for her to swim towards him and to safety.

It was different now. Which was why she brushed her lips against his when he passed her as she was making breakfast. Or melted into him in bed as they breathed the same air, languid kisses spreading warm liquid-comfort in her veins.

He was good for her, to her. The smile she gave him as they both stood by the crib they already knew they'd buy was one of those things she was working on. Working on showing appreciation. On rewiring her brain and forcing happiness into whatever gloom she got herself stuck in. So that she could be better for him, for herself, their daughter, and his family. No longer accepting sadness as a fact was refreshing, and she wanted to defeat it with him by her side. And those smiles were rewarded with a light touch, a kiss, or a smile back, which were the most effective weapons of all.

"She's going to be so small," Kate said, tracing a finger over the polished wood.

"Yesterday you said she was going to be huge." He was teasing her, she knew, but still rolled her eyes at him. The day before he had bemoaned about not being able to be pregnant and feel the baby move inside of him which had led to her listing all of the reasons he should be thankful he wasn't.

"Shut up Rick." She tried to keep her face steady, but when a blush spread across her cheeks she lowered her head and let her hair fall forward to hide her face.

"Just keeping you honest." He pressed a kiss on the top of her head, and she leaned slightly back into him, bumping her shoulder teasingly into his chest. "I'm going to go get someone who'll sell this thing to us."

He left her alone by the cribs, staring at the crib that would be identical to the one their daughter would sleep in. She brushed her stomach, a smile dusting her face. The dream image of baby legs fidgeting in it had her look back to where Rick disappeared off to. Pink and light pastel colors caught her eyes. Dresses, onesies, socks, bibs and all things a baby could possibly need and more.

 _I can't believe this is my life_ she thought to herself, drawing a quick breath to catch herself in the disbelief.

The buzzing of her phone pulled her out of her daydreams, and she pulled it out of her jacket pocket to catching an unknown number on the screen.

"Hello?" She could see Rick talking to a man behind the information desk, and smiled when he pointed her way. Obviously bragging. A blush spread across her cheeks and chest.

"Yes, hello. Katherine Beckett?" The voice was ominously rushed and formal at the same time. In the background there was a bustling of activity, but not the kind of noise that could be heard when someone called from a call-center.

"Y-yes, this is she." Once they had called her in California after her father had fallen and broken a leg in a drunken stupor. They never called after that, they hadn't called her for years. She shouldn't be his emergency contact, yet she knew that he would've had time to change it again. Ice ran through her veins.

She knew. It's the psychic ability that came with the proximity to the illness.

"I'm calling about your father Jim Beckett."

Afterward she had no memory of how they got out of the store, how she ended up clutching a trash bin as she threw up in it. There was no way to connect the dots of the memories, there was no chronological order to the chaos of memories. Between the store and the pale yellow itching chair next to her father's hospital bed all was a blurr.

She thought about clutching his hand in hers, holding it tight like she hadn't abandoned him for years. It felt too dishonest. Instead she held the thin wood armrests, clutched them with her sweaty hands. This was where she landed, where she came into herself again. With her father asleep. Skin starting to shift to a light hue of yellow.

This was the sort of moment she expected to be crying in, that she would feel something. Anything. What it was was a bubble, an eerie calm that had etched itself into her core. She tried to grasp for some sort of reaction, some feeling, something that wasn't the pressure of nausea in the pit of her stomach. There was nothing inside of her, even the lazy movements of her daughter twisting around felt distant.

A knock on the door tore her eyes away from her father's rising and falling chest.

"Kate?" the man in the doorway said. It was said as an exhale. Out of all the places, and all the people, she least expected him. Least wanted him. Surely he was in the league of the best in the field, but he was too familiar with a past she had hoped she already left behind.

"David." Her eyes fell shut by their own command. Once many years ago their paths had crossed, and nothing had been pretty, graceful, or dignified about it. He had pitied her as much as he had used her. Not that she hadn't been complicit in it, she was wholly committed to rewriting all hurt back then and loved his disregard of her emotional wellbeing.

His presence made her heart quiver. It wasn't love, it was painful and stirred up her nausea again. She swallowed against the bile, and it stung in her throat.

"Hi." His smile was an attempt at kindness, but she knew the hollowness of it. She had long ago learnt that he was as shallow as he seemed at first glance. "I'm your father's doctor."

"I guessed that," she said dryly, and raised her eyebrows at him. "How is he?"

"It's not good." He stepped into the room, opening up her father's chart, gluing his eyes to the written lines to keep his eyes away from her. Just like he knew her past, she also knew the depravities of his. She was, like she suspected she was in most people's lives, a shameful stain they wish they could remove. "Your father has developed alcoholic liver disease, he was diagnosed a few months back, and hasn't stopped drinking. He has alcoholic hepatitis, and cirrhosis, both condition that worsens the original condition, and he had been advised to stop drinking or his liver would fail him."

"What does that mean?" She knew. She had to hear it.

"At this point the only thing that would save his life would be a liver transplant, but at this point he wouldn't be approved to receive a new liver since he's shown no commitment to stop drinking. He needs to be six months sober, and even with my best prognosis I would not expect him to live that long."

"He's going to die."

When she was four years old her dad took her skiing for the first time. The winter before she had just turned three, and screamed anytime she came close to a pair of skis. But at four she was fearless as her dad held onto her as they skied slowly down the hills, and she didn't even have to do anything when she was tucked between his legs. Later on she would ski on her own, but that first day she skied with him that way, and her mother keeping them company all the way down on her own set of skis.

Of all her childhood memories that was the one she remembered with most warmth. Despite the frostbitten cheeks, and icy fingers, that night they curled up by the fire in the cabin. Though she pretended to be grossed out when her parents kissed it made her feel like she was the luckiest child in the whole world.

10 years after her mother's passing, and he was already about to meet her again. Some alcoholics would have to drink for decades before getting sick, but her dad had yet again pulled the short end of the stick. If she had been here, if she hadn't left, she knew he would've had a far better chance at beating the disease. Then he wouldn't have had his life cut short.

But it was far too late for regrets, and all she had was her hand to hold his as he slept. Even if it was dishonest. What was honesty if it was only for pride?

Ricks embrace was warmer than her father's limp hand. Her father woke up after a couple of hours, and didn't have a clue why he was in the hospital, why his arm was in a cast. He'd fallen, broken it. He didn't remember. But Kate remembered his diagnosis, his prognosis. The yellowness of his skin.

"How was it?" Rick asked. She could feel his lips moving against her forehead, his warm breath tickling the baby hairs at her temple.

"It was bad." He squeezed her harder against him, pulling her as far over him as her stomach would allow them. "He only has a few months left." There, with her face tucked into the crook of his neck, and her hand resting over his heart the idea of her father dying didn't feel as harsh. It hurt, spread like a virus in her veins, but he helped.

"I'm sorry." When she had arrived home just a little over an hour earlier he had food waiting for her. He made her eat, he massaged her feet, and he didn't say anything until he knew she was ready to talk. When they were lying in bed, and she had stopped shivering.

"Thank you, Rick." He stopped rubbing her arm, and peered down at her.

"For what?" She loved the feel of his stubbled cheek against her lips, and she pressed them there to remind herself of him. Remind herself of his goodness, the light that he had given her life.

"For being as damn near perfect as any human being could be."


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:** This one is a little heavier, we're gearing up here for the "final hurdles" before the end of this story. I'm really looking forward to writing this next chapter because I have the dialogue for a part of it prepared for months now. It's pretty much the basis of this entire story, and you'll probably know it when you see it. I can't wait to share it with you guys, and to have the finished story for you so that you'll know what **I** know! I'm so completely blown away by the response to this story, and every time my phone buzzes with an alert from this story it just brings a smile onto my face.

I hope you like this one, it's a little different from the previous chapters.

 _Distill a whole year down into a day_  
 _Act like we all start over with a pristine slate_  
 _But to get yourself a new life you've got to give the other one away_  
 _And I'm starting to believe in the power of a name_  
 _Cause it can't be a mistake if I just call it change_

 _ **Sara Barreilles - December**_

* * *

 **Chapter 14 - Now and Then**

 _6 years ago_

It was a dimly lit café tucked into the side of the highway. This café was a place 24 year old Kate Beckett would frequent often, toying with the idea of returning to the life that she had left behind in New York. She would sit there for hours, watching the headlights of cars disappearing into a distance she would not dare to venture into. She would flip the phone open and shut in her hand, her thumb grazing over the 2, ready to punch in the number to her father. But she never did.

"Do you want a refill, hon?" The heavy-set waitress asked. Kate didn't have to read the name tag anymore to know her name.

"No thanks Patrice, I should get going." Kate smiled weakly, pulling a few crumbled notes out of the pocket of her jeans and did her best to straighten them out before putting them on the table.

"Alright hon, see you on Thursday." Patrice didn't notice the double-take Kate did at the comment. She hadn't known how predictable she had gotten, and the realization settled like a heavy stone in the pit of her stomach. It sent jitters through her veins, closed up her airways and the claustrophobia wasn't far behind. It didn't take a doctor to recognize the symtoms, but Kate only felt the restlessness that pulled her out of her seat. She knew the medication, knew what helped before.

David was doing his AT-service at one of the hospitals in the area. Neither Kate nor David knew that when they met, but she knew he was looking for a stressrelief. He lived in an apartment that was not much bigger than the bed in it, and the walls were bare of anything that would be able to fool her into thinking he was anything but the exterior he showed her. All he cared about was getting ahead, and he had no interest in human connection. That was what made him perfect for her.

There were no questions as to why she needed to see him, nor any concern of how she chose to escape whatever was bothering her. He knew that he wasn't her first, that he was in a line of men who were only good enough as long as they made her forget whatever it was that she needed to escape. It was a reciprocal non-relationship, and neither of them were playing the other person.

In the miniature apartment equipped with a water boiler, instant coffee, and a microwave that heated up frozen pizzas bought from the corner store three stories down, it was simple. Neither undressed the other, and he buried his face between his thighs and didn't leave until her knees shook with an orgasm. They never made love, it was never slow. He fucked her so that she forgot her name, his fingers leaving bruises on her thighs, arms. She left her own marks, a feral fury bubbling to the surface as she clawed at his back and scalp, biting his neck hard enough to break the skin. It was never pretty, it never left her feeling proud. But with him between her thighs, above her, or under her, or behind her, she no longer had to think. And that was all she needed. All that she had to be was a primal being who didn't care about anything but what went on in that room.

Afterward he would sometimes hand her a bottle of whatever flavor of the week, that night it was a tequila bottle that was nearing empty, left over from a party she knew the doctors had held that weekend. She never hesitated, always took a few gulps of it, and then passed it over to him. She would feel sore then, but not yet ashamed of herself. At 24 the shame hadn't quite settled in yet, it felt dirty and exactly how she wanted because it was distracting, but she was not ashamed.

"I'm moving to New York," David said that night as she walked over the mattress to get to the bathroom. She didn't respond to him, they didn't talk often, and New York wasn't a topic she was about to change that with. "Aren't you from there?" He looked casual on the bed: lying on his back naked and unbothered by her piecing stare.

"It was a long time ago," she answered, and ran a hand through her tangled hair.

"Got any tips?" Despite her deflection he pushed on, pushing buttons he knew would get somewhere. Why, she didn't know. It frustrated her that she couldn't read him. What was attractive about him, beyond that he was ridiculously good looking with a six-pack she had no clue how he managed to get or maintain with his crazy schedule, was how easy he was to understand.

"Mind your own business, is my tip." She slammed the door to the bathroom shut behind her. She leaned against the sink, focusing on steadying her breathing as she stared into the rusty drain. She may not have felt any shame about this, but the mere mention of New York made shame well up like nausea, and tears started to press behind her eyelids. Back there she had left him, her father, when he needed her the most. No matter where she went she could never outrun the shame of it. She could never outrun how pathetic and useless she felt for leaving, yet she could not find it in her to return. And that she couldn't return made her feel that much worse.

The door opened behind her. It didn't have a lock, it had always been broken. She didn't look up to see him in the mirror, but she could feel him press himself up against her back. His hand slid down the flat expanse of her stomach and between her thighs. Despite her anger at him her breathing picked up, and she arched her back so that she could press against his hand and the hardening member pressed against her ass. As his fingers worked fasted between her legs, his finger rolled over her clit he pressed himself into her.

This is what she knew, what she needed. Not the talking. Her knuckles turned white as she held onto the porcelain of the sink, pressing herself back against him, settling into a rhythm until his punishing pace made it impossible for her to keep up. All she could do was hold on as an orgasm washed over her, and when her legs wouldn't keep her up anymore he held her weight up against him.

When she left his apartment she knew that it would be the last time she went there. If he called her she would ignore him. He had the stench of New York on him now, and there was no way she would ever let herself fall into that pit again.

—-

 _Now_

The baby rolled in her stomach, lazy and heavy inside her womb. The paper cup filled with tepid tea was untouched in her hand as she stared unseeing down the long hospital corridor. The inside of the hospital room was stuffy and dark. As the alcohol left his system his body protested, craving more of the substance that was sure to kill him now. Her dad had insisted on the curtains being drawn shut and grew increasingly upset at any sound that disrupted his peace.

She pressed her hand against her stomach, against the solidness of her belly, and felt a hand or a foot push back against it in annoyance. The daughter that she carried inside of her was an anchor she was lucky to have. Whenever her mind started to float away, and spiral into chaos her daughter's kicks would pull her back into her body. While most likely she woke up from the increased pulse, and was equally affected by the adrenaline that pumped like poison in Kate's veins, Kate liked to imagine it as kicks to comfort her.

Many times she felt like she owed her daughter an apology. Her daughter deserved more than what Kate had to offer her now. With three months left until her arrival it was seeming more and more unlikely that she would ever get to meet her grandfather. With each second ticking closer to that inevitable future she unraveled even more. Like a ball set in motion down a hill she could not stop the onslaught anymore. Yet again she was facing the death of a parent, but this time she had to prepare for it.

When Johanna Beckett died Kate believed that if she had been able to prepare, had time to bargain and mourn before her mother drew her last breath, then it all would have gone a lot different. As she stared at the closed door to her father's hospital room she knew that death was never easy. Now she was torn between the knowledge that death would end the pain he was in, and the depths of sadness that overwhelmed her at the thought of her father no longer being a part of her future.

It was self-inflicted. That she could acknowledge. On each of their parts they had inflicted all of this pain onto themselves. Her by staying away for a decade, and him for picking up the drink.

—-

 _4 years ago_

The application forms laid crumbled at the bottom of her bag when she opened it in the morning. Her superior had handed them to her over the break she had at dinner-time two days before, urging her to apply. It would give her a higher paycheck, more responsibility, and advance her career.

Becoming a paramedic had never been her goal. Neither had she ever planned on being an EMT. It was one thing to fall into the profession of EMT, and tell herself it was a temporary thing until she got her life into order. It was an entirely different thing to commit herself to it, and to become a paramedic.

Instead of declining the offer Kate had taken the papers, giving as big of a convincing smile as she could muster, and stuffed the papers into her bag. That bag had haphazardly fallen just by the door in someone's apartment, scattering half of its contents across the floor.

The inside of her skull throbbed to the beat of her pulse, and she was thankful for the dimly lit hallway she was crouched in. The light that had pierced through the open curtains in the living room had roused her from her sleep, and threatened to blow her head up with its glare. The shots of tequila she had taken to chase down the foul tasting lukewarm beer had been a bad idea, and even in her inebriated state she had known that. She hoped that she would get home before her stomach turned against her, not feeling like embarrassing herself by puking out of a taxi by the side of a highway. In her experience it wasn't something the driver tended to appreciate. When it happened Kate made sure to tip extra.

It would be a lie to say that the application had been the reason for why she went out after her shift ended the night before. However, it was the excuse she had given herself. By now it felt tired, even to her, to use her mother's death and father's alcoholism to excuse her personal moral decline.

She took the excuses that were given to her to satisfy the itch of boredom that crawled under her skin. It was the itch that crawled under her skin when the grief pressed underneath her lungs, and it was too much for one person to bear. So she had to go out, she had to quench the grief with something more urgent and present. As long as she could focus on the now she had no time to dwell on the past. Each time she battered up her insides she hoped that the sadness of other things would grow smaller in comparison. It never did, but it never stopped her from trying.

At work she had a reputation. She knew that. Most people didn't care as long as it didn't involve them, but some did. It hurt, she had to admit that, when the nurses at some of the hospitals would scoff at her, or when a wife to one of her co-workers viewed her with suspicion. The married co-workers were off-limits to her. Though she usually felt no obligation to the spouses of the men she had sex with there was nothing to gain with bringing that kind of drama into the shop. And it was all a carefully weighed game of risks and gains at this point.

Though now she was old enough to admit that even the most carefully weighed plans could fall if the wolf were to blow at her house, it was the responsible thing to at least have one. Which was why she kept condoms in a tin container in her bag, and took her pill between 6 and 7pm every evening. In her line of work, and with her choice of lifestyle, there was no consistency to her sleep schedule. So while she would've preferred to take it as she woke up she didn't want to risk ever being late taking it. The pills were kept in the same place as the condoms; within the unremarkable tin container that scrambled around in her bag to remind her of its presence.

As she reached for the container that had slid across the hallway floor in the night when she had arrived, she felt the pull and twinge low in her belly that caused her to wince. In their rush she had been too dry, and he had been too quick. The pain had almost been a welcome distraction then, dulled by the alcohol, but now she hissed and tried to breathe into it.

The pain eased into something that was more discomfort than anything, and she put everything back into her bag. The litter of things covered the paper, scrunching it up until it was no more than trash. Useless.

Before she left she glanced at her phone, unlocking the screen with a press to the red button. The phone had saved her last thought before she had left with the guy — she didn't remember his name. The contact was saved as _Home phone_ despite that she didn't call that place home anymore. It didn't belong to anyone who she could feel home with, either.

Often in a momentary romanticism brought on by the haziness of alcohol she found herself entertaining the thought of going back. People sometimes asked questions about her back home, the place she never visited, as if her disinterest in her past was peculiar. Maybe it was. Either way, back home wasn't home; it was only back.

She pressed the return button until she was back on the home screen again. Safe from temptation.

—-

 _Now_

She knew that she could have called Rick to help her, but she didn't. It wasn't that the thought hadn't occurred to her, because it had, but because she didn't want him there. As good as the man was, she knew she wasn't. It was becoming abundantly clear each day that not only had she failed as a daughter to her father, but also as a person. Hadn't she left then he would've been sober, and she knew that in her heart to be true. Though she had no superpower to see the might've-beens, the belief of it was as much evidence she needed to convince herself.

Not once during the climb up the stairs to her father's apartment with his weight bearing down on her shoulder did she regret the decision to not call Rick. There were many things she did regret, but not this one.

In preparation for his arrival home she had cleaned up the mess he had left behind him in his rush to the hospital. Though she was under no illusions that the rush of the admittance had actually caused much, if any, of the mess she had tasked herself with cleaning up. When the cleaning had been done she had interviewed hospice services and nurses that would care for her father's increasing needs during the coming months. The first nurse would arrive that afternoon, but now it was only 10am and the hospital had discharged him as soon as possible to get an available bed.

Both Kate and her father were wheezing by the time they reached the door to the Beckett apartment. Kate from her increasing uncomfortable weight that made any graceful movement mere chance than anything else, and Jim because he was an ailing alcoholic with a fast approaching expiration date.

The two of them settled on the couch inside, catching their breaths and gathering their senses of the new normal that they were about to get to know. They'd talked briefly about what was to come, but Kate hadn't wanted to overload her dad with to much practical information when he got exhausted from just sitting up. The stairs had obviously taken most of his energy judging by the drooping of his eyelids, and neither of them had the energy to take him to bed.

Instead of taking him to bed she took a hold of his legs and carefully placed them on the couch, thanking her lucky stars that he'd sat down in the middle of the couch. Otherwise his head wouldn't have aligned so perfectly with the side cushions to the couch. As soon as his eyes fluttered shut he was already out.

—-

 _1 year ago_

Patrice filled her cup up without Kate needing to ask. Over the years the two of them had developed a silent friendship, and though neither knew much more about the other than their first names, it was the one lasting friendship she had had since high school. And it was in between the familiar smile Patricie gave her and Patricie walking away from her window booth that it dawned on her. The realization was like an ill-fitting shoe, uncomfortable and impossible to ignore.

Turning her head to catch Patrice sashaying over towards a co-worker, both laughing at the joke that was lost on Kate, it further cemented the truth in her realization.

This was not where she belonged.

Though Patrice's smiles were always welcoming and kind, and she was always greeted Kate like a friend who'd stayed away for long, she was only a customer. The irrefutable fact was that whatever life she pretended to live in this city was no life. Over the past decade she had not made her mark, nor rooted herself in any capacity beyond the superficial.

What she had in Los Angeles she could just as easily have anywhere else in the world. Her life here was as exchangeable as her presence in other people's lives. Though she knew that people like Patrice would at some point pause and wonder when the last time that EMT-girl last came in, and how odd that it had been so long, her absence would not be noted as more than an anomaly in the day to day life.

Maybe it was the years between her mother's death and now, but on her second cup of coffee that night she wanted nothing more than to matter again. It was a longing that she hadn't felt in years, to be noticed and to be someone.

The last time she had been someone had been in New York, and she knew of one person there that still saw her as a person that mattered. Though she had been running for years from that place, it was the only place she could think of where she would no longer be anonymous.

Before the third cup of coffee arrived, and before she ordered a second plate of fries to it, she had reached her decision. She was moving back to New York.

—-

 _Now_

"I'm sorry I haven't called," Kate said, cradling the phone close to her ear.

In the small kitchen she could only see a small speck of the hallway that extended towards the bedrooms, but out of habit she still looked out towards it to catch any potential eavesdropper. The nurse had arrived a few hours before, and was now preparing her father for bed.

"No, it's okay. I understand that you're busy," Rick replied. From the tone of his voice she could hear that he did understand. "How is your dad?"

"He's uh…" She watched the corner of the hallway that was visible to her, as if she could see through walls and into her dad's bedroom. "Tired." No words seemed to be enough, yet she couldn't find the ability to think of any other word to describe him. Watching him wither was exhausting too, but she didn't want to tell him that. Right now she didn't have the energy to think about how she was feeling.

"Are you… are you coming back here tonight?" He spoke as if he was testing the stability of the ice underneath him, wanting the ice to hold but still uncertain that the storm that'd just passed over hadn't destroyed it.

"I'm staying." It wasn't until he'd asked that she had thought to ask herself that question. Even without him asking she would've arrived at the same decision. Leaving her father wasn't a choice anymore. Too many times she had decided not to come, so now she owed it to him, and to herself, to stay.

"Okay, I understand…" Despite his words he sounded weary, knowing that the ice was cracking underneath the weight of his foot, but still wanting to know for sure if the ice would hold him. "Do you want me to have a driver pick you up tomorrow?"

"No Rick… I'm staying here," she clarified. "I can't leave him again."

He plummeted into the ice cold water.

"I understand." He didn't.


End file.
